[SOLVED] Change drive letters

[hunterczech]

Hello,
I bought myself SSD disk and accidentally attached it letter :A and installed W10 on it and now can't install some apps on :A for obvious reasons I know now. I have Windows 10 on my normal HDD with letter C:, another on SSD with letter :A and I don't know how to have only SSD on C:\ (and other drives as D:, E:, F: ). I can't change it in compmgmt disk manager and I don't have any USB flash drive with 8gigs+ space.. Anyone know what to do ? Thanks in advance.

If I reinstall will the letters order automatically or do I have to do it myself?

 

[britechguy]

When you say, "installed W10 on it," the question then becomes, "How and on what machine?"

You cannot just plonk in a disk drive with Windows 10 on it that was installed on it and activated on different hardware and expect all to be hunky dory.

If you are really trying to start from scratch with Windows 10 on one of those SSDs in a specific machine. You should install that SSD as the system disk in the machine in which you intend to use it, disconnect all other drives except it (during the reinstall process), and do a completely clean reinstall of Windows 10 using it as the target drive. After that you can hook up any auxiliary drives you want and Windows will assign them a drive letter other than C: (or A: or B: and probably D: for that matter).

Doing a completely clean reinstall (options a & b are downloadable PDF files):

a) Completely Clean Win10 (Re)install Using MCT to Download Win10 ISO File

b) Completely Clean Win10 (Re)install Using MCT to Create a Bootable USB Drive

c) How to do a CLEAN Installation of Windows 10 (Tom’s Hardware Forums, with screen shots)

 

[hunterczech]

But the SSD has already A: letter attached to it. If I do that reinstall will the letter change to C: automatically?

 

[britechguy]

Yes. A completely clean reinstall with a single drive attached will always result in said drive receiving the drive letter C:, which is the Windows default for the OS drive.

 

[hunterczech]

And what happens to the drive that has Windows 10 preinstalled with C:\ letter and gets connected after installation of this ssd which will be C:\ now?

 

[britechguy]

It will be assigned the next available drive letter.

Windows only really "remembers" the drive letters for fixed drives. Even though there are no longer floppy drives, the letters A and B still remain reserved as though they exist. C is assigned to the OS system drive. D is very commonly assigned to the optical drive, if the system has one.

You can force a given Windows installation to remember a drive letter for specific external drives by using Disk Management to assign those when said drives are connected. For instance, in my household I have two backup drives, one used on even months and the other used on odd months, and each has been given the drive letters V and X, respectively, on all machines that use them. However, I could have named them V and X on one machine and K and P on another. It is what Disk Management for the specific machine has in its "list of drives I'm supposed to know permanently," that determines the drive letters used. When external drives not in that list are connected, they're assigned the next unused drive letter as their designator.

 

[hunterczech]

Reinstalled pc with hdd´s dc’d and only ssd connected and it worked so this issue is solved now. Thanks.

 

[britechguy]

Thanks for reporting back. And you're quite welcome.