A drive letter is a single alphabetic character A through Z that has been assigned by Windows to a physical drive or drive partition connected to the computer to reference the drive by.
If you don’t like the drive letter assigned to a drive, you can change it.
This tutorial will show you how to change a drive letter in Windows 11.
A volume label is the friendly name for a connected drive or volume.
An internal drive will usually be assigned Local Disk as its volume label by default.
A USB flash drive will usually be assigned USB Drive as its volume label by default.
A NTFS or ReFS volume label can be up to 32 characters in length, including spaces. NTFS volume labels retain and display the case that was used when the label was created. A FAT volume label can only be up to 11 characters in length.
This tutorial will show you different ways to rename a drive or volume label to what you want in Window 11.
You can mount (make a drive accessible) in a folder rather than a drive letter if you want. This makes the drive appear as just another folder.
When you mount an internal or external drive in an empty folder, you will be able to access the contents of the drive from the path of the folder. The contents of the drive will still physically be located on the drive. Anything you save into this folder will actually be saved to the drive.
You can mount a drive or volume with or without a drive letter as an empty folder.
This tutorial will show you how to add (assign) or remove (unassign) mount point folder paths for a drive or volume in Windows 11.
Checking your drives for errors every once in a while can help fix some performance issues. Drive errors can usually be caused by bad sectors, improper shutdowns, bad software, corruption, physical damage, etc…
CHKDSK (Check Disk) checks the file system and file system metadata of a volume (drive) for logical and physical errors.
The chkdsk command is used to check the integrity of the file system on the hard drive and make necessary fixes. The command can also fix bad sectors on your hard drive.
Bad sectors are divided into “Soft bad sectors” and “Hard bad sectors”. “Soft bad sectors” are logical bad sectors, and chkdsk can easily fix them. “Hard bad sectors” are due to physical damage to the disk. CHKDSK cannot repair “Hard bad sectors”, but it can mark the sectors to stop any data writing to them and prevent issues.
This tutorial will show you how to run CHKDSK to check a drive for file system errors in Windows 11.
All drives are shown under the This PC group in the navigation pane of File Explorer by default.
Removable drives are shown as separate groups in the navigation pane of File Explorer by default in addition to being shown under the This PC group in the navigation pane.
You could Pin to Quick access the Windows C: drive to also have it under the Home group in the navigation pane.
If you like, you can add the Windows C: Drive as its own separate group to the top or bottom of the navigation pane of File Explorer for even easier and faster access.
This tutorial will show you how to add or remove the the Windows C: Drive in the navigation pane of File Explorer for your account in Windows 11.
A drive letter is a single alphabetic character A through Z that has been assigned to a physical drive or drive partition in the computer to reference the drive by.
This tutorial will show you how to show drive letters before or after drive labels (name) in File Explorer for your account in Windows 10 and Windows 11.
A drive letter is a single alphabetic character A through Z that has been assigned to a physical drive or drive partition in the computer to reference the drive by.
This tutorial will show you how to hide or show drive letters in File Explorer for your account in Windows 10 and Windows 11.
You can Map a network drive to access shared files on it from File Explorer in Windows without having to look for it or type its network address each time.
This tutorial will show you how to disconnect a mapped network drive for your account in Windows 11.
You can Map a network drive to access shared files on it from File Explorer in Windows without having to look for it or type its network address each time.
A mapped network drive has the following characteristics:
This tutorial will show you how to map a network drive for your account in Windows 11.
Optimizing your drives can help your PC run smoother and boot up faster.
Windows 11 includes Optimize Drives that will automatically retrim a SSD or defrag a HDD as needed.
Optimize Drives runs automatically on a weekly schedule at the time set in automatic maintenance. You can also manually run Optimize Drives on demand as needed.
This tutorial will show you how to add Optimize to the context menu of drives in Windows 10 and Windows 11 to make it easier to optimize and defrag drives on demand.
Optimizing your drives can help your PC run smoother and boot up faster.
Windows 11 includes Optimize Drives that will automatically retrim a SSD or defrag a HDD as needed.
Optimize Drives runs automatically on a weekly schedule at the time set in automatic maintenance. You can also manually run Optimize Drives on demand as needed.
This tutorial will show you how to optimize and defragment drives in Windows 11.
Removable drives are shown as separate groups in the navigation pane of File Explorer by default in addition to being shown under the This PC group in the navigation pane.
OS drives and fixed drives (ex: internal drives) will only be shown under This PC, and not separately in the navigation pane.
This tutorial will show you how to add or remove the drives showing twice in the navigation pane of File Explorer for all users in Windows 11.
Windows 11 includes the default General items, Documents, Pictures, Music, and Videos templates used to optimize the layout and view of every drive, folder, or library.
Windows 11 uses Automatic Folder Type Discovery to detect the contents of a folder and automatically optimize the folder for the proper template. If a folder contains a mixture of file types, Windows will use the General items template. If there is an overwhelming number of files with the same file type in a folder, Windows will automatically optimize the folder with the proper template to match the majority.
A template is just a default layout and view, you can customize the layout and view of a folder to how you like in File Explorer.
This tutorial will show you how to manually change the template of a drive, folder, or library for your account in Windows 11.
Storage usage lets you see how your storage is used on a drive and how you can free up space.
This tutorial will show you how to view the storage usage of local storage drives in Windows 11.
S.M.A.R.T. (Self-Monitoring, Analysis and Reporting Technology; often written as SMART) is a monitoring system included in computer hard disk drives (HDDs), solid-state drives (SSDs), and eMMC drives. Its primary function is to detect and report various indicators of drive reliability with the intent of anticipating imminent hardware failures.
When S.M.A.R.T. data indicates a possible imminent drive failure, software running on the host system may notify the user so preventive action can be taken to prevent data loss, and the failing drive can be replaced and data integrity maintained.
Hard disk and other storage drives are subject to failures which can be classified within two basic classes:
This tutorial will show you how to check the health and SMART status of all connected local drives to see if they are failing in Windows 10.
You can right click or press and hold on a drive in Windows, and click/tap on Properties to see more details about the drive’s properties.
The Quota tab in the properties page window of drives allow you to manage quota settings for the drive.
Disk quotas track and control disk space usage for NTFS file system volumes, allowing administrators to control the amount of data that each user can store on a specific NTFS volume. Administrators can optionally configure the system to log an event when users are near their quota, and to deny further disk space to users who exceed their quota. Administrators can also generate reports, and use the event monitor to track quota issues.
This tutorial will show you how to add or remove the Quota tab on the Properties page of drives for all users in Windows 10.
You can right click or press and hold on a drive in Windows, and click/tap on Properties to see more details about the drive’s properties.
The Hardware tab in the properties page window of drives allow you to see device properties for the drive.
This tutorial will show you how to add or remove the Hardware tab on the Properties page of drives for all users in Windows 10.
When you add or connect a new volume (disk or drive), Windows will automatically mount it with an assigned drive letter by default.
Each drive (volume or partition) will have an unique Volume GUID assigned to it by Windows. This ensures Windows can always uniquely identify a volume, even though its drive letter has changed. On systems with a lot of storage you will often run out of drive letters for your partitions and volumes.
Whenever you reconnect a drive to the computer, it will always use the same drive letter it was last assigned or changed to.
If you unmount a drive, Windows removes the volume mount point from the specified directory, dismounts the volume, and makes the volume not mountable. This means the specific drive (volume or partition) will have its drive letter removed and no longer be automatically mounted and assigned a drive letter whenever connected to the computer until you manually mount it again. This can be handy if you no longer want a disk or drive (volume or partition) to be assigned a drive letter when connected until you want to manually mount it.
When you manually mount an unmounted drive, you make the volume mountable again by creating a volume mount point with an assigned drive letter. This will allow Windows to automatically mount the drive with its last used drive letter each time the drive is connected to the computer.
This tutorial will show you how to manually mount and unmount a drive or volume in Windows 7, Windows 8, and Windows 10.
You can assign a mount point folder path to a drive to have the drive appear as a normal folder located where you want.
With you mount an internal or external drive to an empty folder, you will be able to access the contents of the drive from the folder path. The contents of the drive will still physically be located on the drive. Anything you save into this folder will actually be saved to the drive.
You can mount a drive with or without a drive letter to an empty folder.
This tutorial will show you how to assign a mount point folder path to a drive to link the folder and drive in Windows 10.
When you rename a drive, file, and folder in Windows, the name cannot contain any of the following characters: \ / : * ? ” < > |
In Windows 10, you can use the Emoji Panel to include an Emoji in the name of a drive, file, and folder.
Emoji are ideograms and smileys used in electronic messages and Web pages. Emoji are used much like emoticons and exist in various genres, including facial expressions, common objects, places and types of weather, and animals.
When you use an emoji in a drive, file, or folder name, the emoji will be a basic black and white version.
Any drive, file, or folder that includes an emoji in its name, you will not be able to link to it in a command prompt or when mapping or sharing over a network. If this is an issue for you, then do not include an emoji in the name. Otherwise, using an emoji in the name could help make it less accessible to unwanted sources.
This tutorial will show you how to use the Emoji Panel to include an emoji in drive, file, and folder names in Windows 10.