What are the letters associated with these drives?

Answer 1

In the 'old days', micro-computers didn't have drives. They used tape storage, etc. When 'floppy' drives began to be used (late 70's) they needed to be assigned some value so you could say which one to read from or write to. Someone (I'm not sure who) decided on using the letters 'A' through 'Z' for them. Most computers would only have had one or two floppy drives, so they typically were assigned to 'A' and 'B'. When 'hard' drives began to appear they also needed to be assigned a value, and because 'A' and 'B' were likely to already be used the hard drive was assigned to 'C'. Later additional hard drives may have been installed and they would be assigned 'D', 'E', etc. So you will probably notice that if your computer has a floppy drive it will be designated as 'A', and your hard drive will be designated as 'C'. The usage of letters is Windows way of telling the different drives apart. A:\ is usually designated for a 3.5" floppy disk, B:\ is usually designated for a 5.25" floppy disk, C:\ is generally assigned to the hard drive and is what Windows is installed on. D:\ is generally assigned to a CD-ROM. Depending on your own computer, this may or may not hold true (e.g. if you have 2 hard drives, one may be assigned D:\ and your CD-ROM drive E:\).