When you go into Device Manager and click on Disk drives you see entries like

Maxtor 7Y250M0

WD6400AAKS-00E4A0

 

[FYI all those “0” are zeros -MM]

But it doesnt tell what driver letter, eg C:, D:, E:, F: etc it is.

There happens to be an excellent question and answer about this (by the same person) on answers.microsoft.com.

The short answer is there’s a “Volumes” tab in disk drive device properties.

The long answer is:

1. Once you’re already in Device Manager with Disk drives expanded,
2. Right-click on a disk drive device and select “Properties”.
3. Click the “Volumes” tab
4. Click the “Populate” button.
5. The drive letter like F: should appear under the “Volume” column in the lower half of the dialogue box.

That’s the drive letter for that device.

Or, you can do it from “My Computer” or “Windows Explorer” :

1. Double click on “My Computer” or Start -> Programs -> Windows Explorer or Start -> Run -> explorer
2. Navigate to “My Computer” or “Computer” (showing the list of drives with their drive letters)
3. Right-click on a drive (it doesnt matter which one), and select “Properties”
4. Select “Hardware” tab
5. Click on one of the drive device names (you have to do this for every name, in turn)
6. Click the “Properties” button (yes you’re now in the Properties of the Properties–welcome to Windows)
7. Click the “Volumes” tab
8. Click the “Populate” button.
9. The drive letter like F: should appear under the “Volume” column in the lower half of the dialogue box.

If you’re trying to map a particular drive letter, like C: to its device name, you will have to keep repeating these steps from step 5, trial and error fashion, for each drive device name until you find the one that has volume C:.

I’ll post pictures here of each step if i get the time.

For reference, “jabloomf’s” concise posts from answers.microsoft.com :

Question

jabloomf asked on 2/12/2010 3:57:32 AM

Matching drive Letter with physical drive

I know there must be a simple way of doing this. I have 5 SATA drives on my Windows 7 system. The boot drive (C:) and another drive (E:) are 150 GB WD Raptors. The two Raptors are connected to the mobo’s [motherboard’s] SATA1 and SATA4. But how can I tell whether the C: drive is on either SATA1 or SATA4? All in can see in the Device Manager is the drive S/Ns. In disk management, all I can see are the drive letters and the drive type, but not the S/N. I know that I could power down, unplug one of the drives from the mobo and see what happens when I reboot, but I was wondering if there was some way to find out from the OS.

The only other way I decided that it might be possible to find out is to use the BIOS to examine the S/Ns and try booting from each drive using the BIOS and see what happens.

And his answer:

Answer

jabloomf replied on

Thanks, but I figured it out a different way, in case anyone is interested. You click on the drive Properties from the Windows Explorer. Then you click on the Hardware tab and click on the drive caption. For a 150 GB WD Raptor the caption (or name) looks something like:

WDC WD1500AHFD000RAR4 ATA Device

Then click the Properties button and then the Volumes tab. Then populate the Volumes and you have a match of the drive caption and the drive letters. The drive caption is also shown in the BIOS, so you can confirm that you’ve matched the correct physical drive with both the drive letters and the SATA port.