Multiple drive letters without needing partitions?

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Fuzzy_3D

Limp Gawd
Joined
May 27, 2007
Messages
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Not sure if this has been done yet, but is it possible to store files under different drive letters without partitioning the drive?

Imagine one big drive, with folders "A", "B, "C", and "D". Now forget that they are on a partition and treat them like drives.

This way, the drives aren't bound by the size of their partition, and can share a common "free space" pool.

I know one solution is to create those folders and map them as network drives to the same machine, but I'm wondering if there's a native
 
Make a folder in root (for example, named "c:\storage") then type the command

subst [drive letter]: [source folder]

for example if you want "Storage" to be letter E:, you'd type

subst e: c:\storage

That folder will become E: drive.
 
What you really want is a jbod raid. That will get the desired results that you're looking for.

Consider the other way, too -- instead of multiple drives, use multiple folders.

For example -- I have a drive dedicated to my game installs. I mounted the drive as c:\program files\games. Programs think it's a folder, but it's actually a full drive.

You could also do it with symlink. You can point one folder to another -- and it doesn't need to be on the same drive.

I still think a jbod raid where you span the volume across multiple disks is what you're looking for...
 
Demon10000 said:
What you really want is a jbod raid. That will get the desired results that you're looking for.

Consider the other way, too -- instead of multiple drives, use multiple folders.

For example -- I have a drive dedicated to my game installs. I mounted the drive as c:\program files\games. Programs think it's a folder, but it's actually a full drive.

You could also do it with symlink. You can point one folder to another -- and it doesn't need to be on the same drive.

I still think a jbod raid where you span the volume across multiple disks is what you're looking for...
Click to expand...

He is looking for the exact opposite of that. Multiple drive letters on a single drive without multiple partitions.
 
Azhar said:
Make a folder in root (for example, named "c:\storage") then type the command

subst [drive letter]: [source folder]

for example if you want "Storage" to be letter E:, you'd type

subst e: c:\storage

That folder will become E: drive.
Click to expand...

I learned something new today in this thread. This will be handy.
 
bigddybn said:
I learned something new today in this thread. This will be handy.
Click to expand...

here's another trick with subst:

You can use subst to map a drive to a remote machine, too:

Code: 
subst drive: \\server\share

Windows treats this like a local drive instead of a mapped drive. If that pesky program doesn't like being "installed to a network drive", connect it using subst to the same letter and it won't know that it's a mapped drive.
 
Azhar said:
Make a folder in root (for example, named "c:\storage") then type the command

subst [drive letter]: [source folder]

for example if you want "Storage" to be letter E:, you'd type

subst e: c:\storage

That folder will become E: drive.
Click to expand...

That's a persistent change, I guess? It'll stay after reboot and all?
 
Forceman said:
That's a persistent change, I guess? It'll stay after reboot and all?
Click to expand...

well the C:\Storage folder will always remain but you can write a .BAT file to recreate the subst link on boot.
 
Azhar said:
well the C:\Storage folder will always remain but you can write a .BAT file to recreate the subst link on boot.
Click to expand...

Ahh, too bad it isn't persistent. Isn't there a way in drive management to map a folder to a drive letter? I thought I remembered seeing that - but maybe it's only the other way.
 
Azhar said:
Make a folder in root (for example, named "c:\storage") then type the command

subst [drive letter]: [source folder]

for example if you want "Storage" to be letter E:, you'd type

subst e: c:\storage

That folder will become E: drive.
Click to expand...

That's exactly it, thanks!

But why isn't this more popular, or have a dedicated GUI or settings tab built into windows to do this out of the box?
I've been tinkering with windows machines for over a decade and have never heard of this until now. It's pretty damn handy if you're always partitioning your drive to organize your data.

The only downside is that you can't take advantage of higher drive performance at the beginning of the drive, but you can easily section off an actual partition for that, and just folder drive the rest for less speed critical data storage.
 
Fuzzy_3D said:
That's exactly it, thanks!

But why isn't this more popular,.
Click to expand...

The Substitute command is actually quite popular, I've done that on many servers over many years in order to setup certain software. And I've seen it done by others in many places.
And there is a GUI method to do this in Windows...just share the folder, browse the shares via netview, right click..map drive.
 
Wow, subst is still here? Gonna check if they have xcopy too. Maybe it's still faster than the windows copy (Copying a thousand 5kb files takes an eternity!)
 
YeOldeStonecat said:
Only in how it's spelled. The end result is still a drive letter pointing to a freaking folder in "My Computer" and as far as end users and applications are concerned.
Click to expand...


Subst is a local drive -- needs no network connect to work and doesn't use the network stack to do the file transfer.

If you share a folder and map a drive to it, the traffic is still treaded as network traffic, even though it's local.

On the back end, there is quite a bit of difference. To visually see it, map a drive to a share then subst a drive to a folder. Now look at "MY Computer" and you'll see that the mapped drive shows up with mapped icon and the subst drive shows up looking like your hard drive.

Gonna check if they have xcopy too. Maybe it's still faster than the windows copy (Copying a thousand 5kb files takes an eternity!)
Click to expand...

Yeah; xcopy is sill there. They tried to replace it with Robocopy in Vista, but it's back in 7 and robocopy is just an addition now.
 
Demon10000 said:
here's another trick with subst:

You can use subst to map a drive to a remote machine, too:

Code: 
subst drive: \\server\share

Windows treats this like a local drive instead of a mapped drive. If that pesky program doesn't like being "installed to a network drive", connect it using subst to the same letter and it won't know that it's a mapped drive.
Click to expand...

fwiw, Windows7 does not behave that way.
I did a:
subst y: \\2ndpc\mp3s

and it shows up as a network drive, not a local drive.
 
Demon10000 said:
For example -- I have a drive dedicated to my game installs. I mounted the drive as c:\program files\games. Programs think it's a folder, but it's actually a full drive.

..
Click to expand...

I once tried that with Win XP. I found out, and it was confirmed by Microsoft, that you could have only one "slave" drive mounted to the "master drive." Can you mount multiple "slave" drives with Win 7?
 
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