How to Map a New Drive Letter

How come my new portable hard drive does not have a drive letter after I connect it to my computer using Windows 2000/XP?

Users on a Microsoft Network with mapped network drive letters may experience drive letter conflicts with this, or any other removable USB device.

This sometimes occurs when you install a new USB device or volume. Windows does not recognize the mapped network drive and assigns the next available drive letter to the new device or volume. This causes a collision with the existing mapped network and therefore the new drive does not show up in Windows Explorer.

To fix this issue:

1. Right-click My Computer, and then click Manage.
2. Under Computer Management (Local), click Disk Management.
3. In the list of drives in the right pane, right-click the new drive and then click Change Drive Letter and Path(s).
4. Click Change, and in the drop-down box, select a drive letter for the new drive that is not assigned to a mapped network drive.
5. Click OK, and then click OK again.

 

The drive letter is assigned to the drive, to the partition, or to the volume that you specified, and then that drive letter appears in the appropriate drive, partition, or volume in the Disk Management tool and as a new drive letter in Windows Explorer.

Important:
Be careful when making drive-letter assignments because many MS-DOS and Windows programs make references to a specific drive letter. For example, the path environment variable shows specific drive letters in conjunction with program names.