Why are the primary hard drive and later storage devices usually assigned C: in Windows instead of starting with A: or B:? I understand that drive letters after C: are typically assigned to additional partitions or devices, but I'm curious why the older lettering convention is still used when floppy drives have been obsolete for so long.
3 Answers
It isn’t impossible to assign a hard drive or partition as A: or B:—those letters can still be configured manually. C: is simply the standard default that modern Windows systems and older software expect, while additional drives usually receive D:, E:, F:, and so on.
The convention goes back even further to CP/M-era systems, which also used A: and B: for floppy drives. Even though physical floppy drives are rare now, many programs, scripts, installers, and system tools still assume that the boot drive is C:. Changing it would risk breaking old software for very little practical benefit.
A: and B: were traditionally reserved for floppy disk drives. Early PCs often had two floppy drives and no hard drive at all, so the first hard disk was assigned C:. Windows inherited this convention from MS-DOS, and it stuck around for compatibility.
Why didn’t newer computers simply change the main drive to A: once floppy drives disappeared?