# What Happens If I Use Up All Available Letters For Drives **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [March 24, 2010, 12:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-happens-if-i-use-up-all-available-letters-for-drives/533561 "2010-03-24T00:45:08Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 4\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![AHunter3](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ahunter3/32/368_2.png) [@AHunter3](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AHunter3)\ **Post date:** [March 24, 2010, 4:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-happens-if-i-use-up-all-available-letters-for-drives/533561/21 "2010-03-24T16:46:24Z")
> [@Capt.Ridley\_s\_Shooting\_Party](#): > > What a hindrance! Why would this surprise you? If you really need more than 26 volumes, why the hell are you using Windows (or a Mac, even) anyway? I never contemplated needing 30 or 40 volumes (I seldom have more than 10) but I also never thought a modern OS would have a limitation so low as that either. If you’d asked me I’d have guessed there was some parameter that was 2 to the xth that was allocated for how many volumes can be concurrently addressed and that it was probably 4096 or 65535 or something. ---
**Author:** ![cuberdon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/45deac/32.png) [@cuberdon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/cuberdon)\ **Post date:** [March 24, 2010, 5:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-happens-if-i-use-up-all-available-letters-for-drives/533561/22 "2010-03-24T17:40:25Z")
> [@HorseloverFat](#): > > This is a long standing bug. USB devices will take the next available non-physical drive letter, but if its already mapped as a network drive, they’ll ignore the mapping and just fail to work without even producing an error. I’ve only seen this on XP. Not sure if Vista/7 has this problem. Thank you for answering a long standing question. I find this mind-boggling, but unfortunately I am not on their bug triage committee. ---
**Author:** ![aceplace57](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/aceplace57/32/3500_2.png) [@aceplace57](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/aceplace57)\ **Post date:** [March 24, 2010, 6:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-happens-if-i-use-up-all-available-letters-for-drives/533561/23 "2010-03-24T18:07:36Z")
Sure they do. It’s very convenient if you need to browse the drive with Explore. I hate memorizing the drive path. I keep several mapped that I use regularly. > [@AHunter3](#): > > You mean PCs still have that “mapped letters for drive” thing going? > > I guess I knew that they still _could_ but do they _have to_? I thought that their existence nowadays was just for legacy and backwards compatibility purposes for some programs or something. > > Are you seriously limited to no more than 26 local volumes? ---
**Author:** ![BDoors](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/e95f7d/32.png) [@BDoors](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BDoors)\ **Post date:** [March 24, 2010, 6:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-happens-if-i-use-up-all-available-letters-for-drives/533561/24 "2010-03-24T18:40:23Z")
Just to make this clear, Windows is not limited to 26 local volumes. I don’t know what the limit is, but I imagine it’s pretty big. It’s just that only 26 of them can have optional drive letters, that being the size of the alphabet. The 26-letter alphabet is a widely-observed standard that even Microsoft comply with ;). So drive letters are a sort of shortcut mechanism, over and above the other ways of accessing volumes which are more like other OSes, i.e., mount the volume within an exisiting filesystem, or use a big ugly string to identify the actual device. As for using drive letters as shortcuts to remote shares, obviously you can also create desktop shortcuts rather than drive letters. But they tend to be not so well supported by applications-- the file open dialog might not immediately show those kind of shortcuts but the drive letters will always be close at hand. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-happens-if-i-use-up-all-available-letters-for-drives/533561.md?page=1)