If you are like me, there are things you do not think you will ever need until you actually need them. This is what happened when I found myself needing to claim the J: drive letter from WD Unlocker that had claimed it.
Where I work, we have assigned J:, among many other drive letters, to a specific network shared folder. But somehow, Western Digital’s WD Unlocker program wanted that very J: letter…
Alright, long story short, a I had to claim the letter back after assigning a different one to that letter-thieving software. Here is how:
- Open Disk Management. One way of doing it is to Run diskmgmt.msc
- Right mouse click on the volume that has the letter you need
- Click Change Drive Letter and Paths.
- Select the drive letter you want to rescue
- Click Change
- From the dropdown list select a new letter you want to assign to the mischievous volume. Please review some precautionary measures in your choice of letters.
- Validate the choice, and boom!
You are done! The captive letter is no longer captive.

How to Change Drive Letter and Paths on a MS Windows 7 or a MS Windows Server 2012 R2 system. Image source: http://www.windowsfaq.ru
Links:
- http://ss64.com/nt/run.html
- http://www.softwareok.com/?seite=faq-Windows-7&faq=15
- http://www.pcworld.com/article/2042380/how-to-change-drive-letters-even-when-the-letter-you-want-isnt-available.html
Other and maybe more interesting links:
- http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/change-add-remove-drive-letter#1TC=windows-7