One of the features in using drive letters in Windows is that the OS will assign the next-available drive letter to a storage device that is plugged into a computer. The potential problem with this is that if two such devices, e.g. USB flash drives, are plugged in together, the resulting drive letter assignments may not be what the user expects.
For example, the flash drive that I routinely use for file synchronization normally shows up as Drive E:. The reason for this is simple – Drive C: is the hard disk partition for Windows and the installed applications, Drive D: is a dedicated data partition, so the next available drive letter is E:. However, suppose that I boot the machine, plug in my 4TB external USB drive and then insert my backup flash drive. Windows, in its infinite wisdom will now assign E: to the external USB drive so that my backup flash drive becomes Drive F:.
This isn’t a huge issue. In FreeFileSync, I can simply browse to Drive F: as the target drive and my backup file synchronization will work as advertised. But, suppose, I really want my backup drive to always display with the same drive letter, how can I achieve this?
In Windows 10, the answer is to right-click on the Start button and select Disk Management. When the list of available drives is displayed, right-click on the drive of interest and select “Change Drive Letter and Paths…” In the subsequent dialogue box, select “Change”. Now, the drop-down menu for “Assign the following drive letter” will allow any available drive letter to be selected. Choose “X” for example since it is unlikely that any drive on the system will ever have this drive letter by default. Click “OK” and – bingo – Windows will now always refer to your flash drive as Drive X: