According to Tech Unwrapped , let's explore why the letters A and B don't exist on Windows computers. In fact, these letters haven't completely disappeared; if you recall, they were used at some point in the past.
Hard drive partitions in Windows always begin with the letter C.
Specifically, the letters A and B were reserved for older floppy disks because early computer models like the IBM PC from 1981, running the DOS operating system, didn't even recognize hard drives. They only had two slots for floppy disks, assigned the letters A and B for identification.
In 1983, when the IBM XT appeared, Microsoft needed to add a new character to its system because this computer model was the first to have a hard drive, albeit only a 10 MB one. Therefore, C began to be used.
The convenience of direct storage on computers, as well as the ever-increasing capacity of these devices, contrasted sharply with floppy disks which remained unchanged at only 1.44 MB. Consequently, their use decreased, leading to their eventual obsolescence. However, the letters A and B remained blank, and the letter C was used purely out of habit. In fact, Microsoft itself didn't know when to change it, as somewhere in the world , there was still a PC using floppy disks. Therefore, shuffling the letters was now impossible, especially since many paths were already pre-designed with C-type lookup programs like root; changing them would create unnecessary chaos.
This only applies to Windows; other systems like macOS or Linux are independent, and their configurations are not based on Microsoft's letter set. Furthermore, Apple points this out on its website because doing it on a Mac is fine, but changing or deleting the letter assigned to a Mac OS X partition while running Microsoft Windows would be problematic.
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