How do I change the drive letter in Windows 10?

QI’ve finally retired my Windows XP desktop PC. The external drive and USB stick that I used with this both work on my new Windows 10 laptop, but the drive letters have flipped! On the XP computer the memory stick used to be drive E and the external hard drive was F, but on my Windows 10 laptop it’s the other way around. I know this isn’t technically a problem, but it’s doing my head in! In particular, I spent years knowing the external hard drive as F and my brain can’t get to grips with it now being E. I’ve tried disconnecting and reconnecting them in a different order but the letters remain. Is there any way to switch them? John Chamberlain

AYes, you can do this. Start by disconnecting the USB memory stick. Now press Windows key+r, type compmgmt.msc and press Enter: this launches the Computer Management console. In the left-hand navigation pane double-click the Storage heading to expand it and, underneath, select Disk Management. Next, in the bottom middle pane, right-click the box representing your external hard drive (F) then choose ‘Change Drive Letter and Paths’ from the pop-up menu (see screenshot).

In the next box, click Change. Another box will appear: check that ‘Assign the following drive’ is selected and then open the dropdown menu to the right and choose E, followed by OK. Finally, pop in your USB stick and then repeat this process, choosing F as the drive letter.