Why Windows still reserves "con" and starts drives at C: — a leftover from 1981
aakashgupta · x · 2026-11-04
You can't name a folder "con" on Windows because the word has been reserved for the console (keyboard and screen) since 1981.
Quoting a user's question about why the main drive is C:, the thread explains: A: and B: were the floppy drives, and DOS assumed two drives even on single-drive machines — it would pretend the same slot was drive B: and prompt you to swap diskettes, a chore anyone from that era remembers.
When IBM shipped the PC XT with a 10MB hard drive in March 1983, A and B were taken, so the hard drive got the next letter: C:. The convention stuck ever since.
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