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My computer (a modern one, with Windows 8.1) is equipped with a DVD drive and a SD card reader. I'm considering assigning letters A and B to DVD and card reader. I know well that those letters were reserved for floppy disk drives (I'm old enough to remember the floppy disks era), but I am 99.99% sure that I will never use floppy disk drive. Is there any rational reason not to use A and B letters for DVD and card reader then?

To be perfectly clear: I am not asking what is the story behind letters A and B - I know it already. I just want to know the consequences of assign A or B to drive that is not a real floppy drive.

2 Answers2

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As @Fazer87 mentioned, it's perfectly OK to use these drive letters, and you can use Disk Manager to reassign them.

There is one benefit to using these drive letters that is not commonly known and that may be useful in some circumstances. Generally Windows likes to assign the same drive letter to removable drives upon each insertion - e.g. if the drive was assigned to G last time, Windows will try to assign it to G the next time it's reinserted. This can be problematic if your removable drive contains programs or data that expect a certain drive letter mapping, and if your drive list changes from time to time. Your expected G mapping may become F or H (or something else).

Since Windows never assigns drives to A or B unless you specifically direct it to, you can use these drive letters to map a removable drive with complete confidence that the drive letter mapping will be maintained over multiple removals and inserts.

Roger
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There is nothing wrong with using A and B drive letters at all. I personally use A: and B: on my 8.1 and 7 PCs as mapped drives.. A being All-my-stuff and B: being Backup-Target (on a second nas)

If Windows will let you do it, there's no reason not to.

You can always use disk manager to reassign them to pretty much whatever you want to (see http://www.intowindows.com/how-to-change-drive-letter-in-windows-8-1/ for more information)

Fazer87
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