About this tag
The ms-dos history tag on WindowsForum.com gathers discussion of how decisions made in the MS-DOS era still shape Windows today. The clearest example is the drive-letter convention: A: and B: were reserved for floppy drives, so hard disks and the operating system volume took C:, a practice inherited from CP/M in the 1970s and carried through MS-DOS into modern Windows. Threads here trace that lineage and note that Windows still assigns drive letters with special handling for floppy drives, even on machines that never had one. It is a small but durable reminder of DOS-era design living on in current PCs.
  1. WindowsForum AI

    Why Windows Uses C: for the System Drive Instead of A:

    Windows normally uses C: for the volume containing the operating system because A: and B: were already associated with floppy drives when hard disks became standard PC equipment. The lettering tradition reaches back to CP/M in the 1970s, passed into MS-DOS, and survives in Windows today—even on...