Need a utility to make a subdirectory look like a drive letter

  • Thread starter Thread starter Yousuf Khan
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Yousuf Khan

I had a near disaster this morning, when a drive less than 2 months old
started getting excessive retry errors, which resulted in the drive
disappearing from BIOS detection. Long story short, after a bit of
fiddling with the SATA cables I got the thing to work again normally.
But needless to say I don't trust the drive anymore and I'm currently
moving all of its files to another drive with sufficient capacity, and
I'm going to exchange that drive.

What I'd like to do is while I await the warranty replacement drive, I'd
like to continue to access the files in the temporary location. Certain
applications are expecting its data to reside on a specific drive
letter, and they can't be made to change their assumptions. In the old
DOS days, there used to be a couple of utilities, Join and Subst (I
don't remember which was which), which would allow you to create virtual
drives out of subdirectories. What's the equivalent in a Windows XP and
higher?

The Windows Disk Manager allows you to make a drive look like a
subdirectory, but will it allow you to make a subdirectory look like a
drive?

Yousuf Khan
 
Yousuf Khan said:
The Windows Disk Manager allows you to make a drive look like a
subdirectory, but will it allow you to make a subdirectory look like a
drive?
Click to expand...

Windows Explorer

Right click on the subfolder -> Sharing and Security -> Share this folder ->
OK, apply, click whatever needed to share this folder...

Again Windows Explorer -> Tools -> Map Network Drive, and map the shared
folder as a network drive...

Since it's on your computer, no network is needed, but you'll get yourself a
drive letter for that subfolder... :)

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Windows Explorer

Right click on the subfolder -> Sharing and Security -> Share this folder ->
OK, apply, click whatever needed to share this folder...

Again Windows Explorer -> Tools -> Map Network Drive, and map the shared
folder as a network drive...

Since it's on your computer, no network is needed, but you'll get yourself a
drive letter for that subfolder... :)
Click to expand...

Whoa! Cool idea, I never even thought of that. I won't be able to try it
right away, but it sounds like it might work.

Yousuf Khan
 
Yousuf said:
I had a near disaster this morning, when a drive less than 2 months old
started getting excessive retry errors, which resulted in the drive
disappearing from BIOS detection. Long story short, after a bit of
fiddling with the SATA cables I got the thing to work again normally.
But needless to say I don't trust the drive anymore and I'm currently
moving all of its files to another drive with sufficient capacity, and
I'm going to exchange that drive.

What I'd like to do is while I await the warranty replacement drive, I'd
like to continue to access the files in the temporary location. Certain
applications are expecting its data to reside on a specific drive
letter, and they can't be made to change their assumptions. In the old
DOS days, there used to be a couple of utilities, Join and Subst (I
don't remember which was which), which would allow you to create virtual
drives out of subdirectories. What's the equivalent in a Windows XP and
higher?

The Windows Disk Manager allows you to make a drive look like a
subdirectory, but will it allow you to make a subdirectory look like a
drive?

Yousuf Khan
Click to expand...

subst is still there, at least in XP. Use something like:

subst z: "%USERPROFILE%\My Documents"

To remove the drive letter:

subst z: /d

You could put this in a batch file, then save the batch file in the
Startup folder in your startmenu.
 
Windows Explorer

Right click on the subfolder -> Sharing and Security -> Share this folder->
OK, apply, click whatever needed to share this folder...

Again Windows Explorer -> Tools -> Map Network Drive, and map the shared
folder as a network drive...

Since it's on your computer, no network is needed, but you'll get yourself a
drive letter for that subfolder... :)
Click to expand...

Yup, it worked like a charm. Thanks.

Yousuf Khan
 
subst is still there, at least in XP. Use something like:

subst z: "%USERPROFILE%\My Documents"

To remove the drive letter:

subst z: /d

You could put this in a batch file, then save the batch file in the
Startup folder in your startmenu.
Click to expand...

You're right, it does seem to be still there. I had been under the
impression that it was removed a long time ago, or only worked with
FAT file systems. Anyways, I think I'll be using the other guy's
locally shared folder method because you can set it to be enabled
during boot in a much simpler fashion.

Yousuf Khan
 
You're right, it does seem to be still there. I had been under the
impression that it was removed a long time ago, or only worked with
FAT file systems. Anyways, I think I'll be using the other guy's
locally shared folder method because you can set it to be enabled
during boot in a much simpler fashion.

  Yousuf Khan
Click to expand...

One warning about the subst command. If the drive letter is fairly
low, eg E: or F:, then there can be conflicts if a new USB drive is
added. If you don't add random drives, then the command works very
well.

Michael
 
One warning about the subst command. If the drive letter is fairly
low, eg E: or F:, then there can be conflicts if a new USB drive is
added. If you don't add random drives, then the command works very
well.
Click to expand...

Not "can be." WILL BE.

AH.
 
Andrew said:
Not "can be." WILL BE.

AH.
Click to expand...

It's probably because even if you put it into autoexec.bat, the hardware
drive mappings will occur before it still.

So it looks like creating a network share that is persistent across
reboots is the superior way to go.

Yousuf Khan
 
It's probably because even if you put it into autoexec.bat, the hardware
drive mappings will occur before it still.
Click to expand...

I do my subst commands in an autoexec.bat-type file. Even so, if at a
later time, I plug in USB drive, that USB drive "takes over" the
subst'ed drive letter.

So it looks like creating a network share that is persistent across
reboots is the superior way to go.
Click to expand...

Yes, that seems true.
 
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