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My semi-permanent USB drive died, so I copied all the files to a replacement. Now I would like to assign the new drive the same drive letter as the old, so I don't have to change the path in every program and shortcut that points to it. Unfortunately, the drive letter (F) is not available in the list of options:

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The other drives on the system are C D G (and E is for the DVD-ROM), so it's not missing because it's in use. I've rebooted multiple times, and completely uninstalled the non-existent drive using USBDeview, but its drive letter is still unavailable.

endolith
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3 Answers3

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Try:

Open CMD command prompt as administrator > type "mountvol /r" without quotes, then press [enter]. Reboot and try again.

The command mountvol /r will remove drive letters for previously connected drives.

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The drive letter may be assigned to a different drive, even if it's not shown in Disk Management or diskpart. Try just entering the drive letter into a File Explorer to verify this.

In my case, the problem was caused by Google Drive being assigned to drive G, which was already in use, so after I removed the old USB stick and rebooted, Google Drive gobbled up the next available letter F for its virtual drive. It allows this to be changed in the settings, though:

Google Drive change Drive letter

which then made the letter available in "Change Drive Letter or Path" again.

endolith
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I realise it is a while since this question was posed but I was looking for an answer and @endolith's proved very useful. Indeed, just try typing in the drive letter in File Explorer and it may well appear unexpectedly! In my case, the problem was that in the process of rebuilding my system, I had disconnected my HDDs temporarily (my C:, D: and E: drives), because I wanted to force the system to boot from a copy of C: on a newly installed SSD. At some point I had to boot from a DVD ROM. Because D: and E: were disconnected, the system decided to assign "D:" to the DVD drive! After I removed the DVD, the drive disappeared from the list of disks in Explorer, but the D: drive letter was still "taken", and Disk Management did not make it available.

I found it necessary to insert a DVD into the drive so that I could change its letter from D to G. After that, the D letter was immediately available.

Norman Friend
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