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Logical Drives as folders in Windows 2000

TheCorm

Diamond Member
If you have say 3 partions under NTFS for windows 2000, am I right in thinking that you could add a few extra logical drives but rather than them actually being seperate partitions they are mapped to folders within the existing partitions?

How do you go about doing this?

Thanx,

Corm
 
Damn....I saw options for mounting NTFS folders as logical drives but this would involve changing an existing logical drive to point to a folder and there appears to be no way to add a new one....shame....can't see why it should be more difficult to have a mapped drive pointing to a local folder since you can map to any folder on a network!....but I guess it's MS for you!

Corm
 
Never mind. Didn't read the origianl post all the way through. You cannot mount partitions as folders within Windows. Only *NIX's.
 
You should be able to do it via Disk Management. You can mount NTFS partitions inside empty folders on other NTFS partitons. It doesn't work nearly as well as it does on unix, but it works.
 
Originally posted by: Nothinman
You should be able to do it via Disk Management. You can mount NTFS partitions inside empty folders on other NTFS partitons. It doesn't work nearly as well as it does on unix, but it works.
And who says MS can't innovate? 😀
 
Originally posted by: Shadow07
Never mind. Didn't read the origianl post all the way through. You cannot mount partitions as folders within Windows. Only *NIX's.

Wrong. Moint points are supported in some versions of Windows.

To add a mount point in Windows 2000 or .NET, right click on My Computer and choose Manage. Go to Disk Management. Right click on the volume that you want to add a moint point for and choose "Change Drive Letter and Path". Click on the Add button. Specify the folder you want in "Mount in this NTFS folder". Note that the folder must be on an NTFS drive.
 
AHHHHH! I hate it when I don't drink enough coffee. I had posted originally that it can be done, through the Computer Management MMC.
 
Originally posted by: juiio
Originally posted by: Shadow07
Never mind. Didn't read the origianl post all the way through. You cannot mount partitions as folders within Windows. Only *NIX's.

Wrong. Moint points are supported in some versions of Windows.

To add a mount point in Windows 2000 or .NET, right click on My Computer and choose Manage. Go to Disk Management. Right click on the volume that you want to add a moint point for and choose "Change Drive Letter and Path". Click on the Add button. Specify the folder you want in "Mount in this NTFS folder". Note that the folder must be on an NTFS drive.

Wow really? nice 🙂 I've never seen that option before

*goes to edit his post...*

 
Doesn't this then mean that it changes the specified drive to mount into a folder, rather than creating a new drive pointing to a folder on a partition?
 
Maybe there is some crossed wires here?...probably my explanation....what I was looking for is something like:

Drive 1
C:\ = Windows 98
D:\ = Windows 2000
*:\ = Linux Redhat 8.0(Ext 3)
E:\ = Partition 1

Drive 2
F:\ = Partition 2

"Virtual" Drives (Mounted on NTFS Folders)
G:\ = Videos (G is actually a pointing to a folder called Videos on E:\)
H:\ = MP3 (H is actually pointing to a folder called MP3's on F:\)

etc etc.....

Does this sound possible? I can get to the bit you mentioned but it almost seems like it would say remove E:\ and replace it with a mounted folder rather than create a new one with drive letter G

Cheers,

Corm
 
Yes. You would do the following:

SUBST H: F:\MP3s

That would mount the H: drive on that folder. Of course, when you rebooted, the H: volume wouldn't be there. You would either have to add this to the AUTOEXEC.NT file, manually do this every time you rebooted, added a batch file to the STARTUP folder, or the RUN regkey for the Local User, etc.
 
Originally posted by: Shadow07
Yes. You would do the following:

SUBST H: F:\MP3s

That would mount the H: drive on that folder. Of course, when you rebooted, the H: volume wouldn't be there. You would either have to add this to the AUTOEXEC.NT file, manually do this every time you rebooted, added a batch file to the STARTUP folder, or the RUN regkey for the Local User, etc.

Could also share that folder (just like sharing over the network) then map it as a drive, and select it to re-map it evertime you boot up.
 
Yes, but that opens holes, and isn't the greatest idea. Not saying that it wouldn't work, but I wouldn't recommend that to anyone. SUBST was designed to do this.
 
Originally posted by: Shadow07
Yes, but that opens holes, and isn't the greatest idea. Not saying that it wouldn't work, but I wouldn't recommend that to anyone. SUBST was designed to do this.

I know... just showing all the options 😀
 
Maybe there is some crossed wires here?...probably my explanation....what I was looking for is something like:

Yes, thanks for the explanation. What you want to do is exactly the opposite of what I thought you wanted to do. I thought you wanted to mount volumes as folders inside a drive to reduce the number of drive letters.
 
Originally posted by: Shadow07
Yes. You would do the following:

SUBST H: F:\MP3s

That would mount the H: drive on that folder. Of course, when you rebooted, the H: volume wouldn't be there. You would either have to add this to the AUTOEXEC.NT file, manually do this every time you rebooted, added a batch file to the STARTUP folder, or the RUN regkey for the Local User, etc.
OMG DOS isn't dead after all! 😛

Funny thing is Corm got his explanation backwards, and everyone answered the converse question.

Beau6183's suggestion is not a good idea. Going through the SMB stack just to get a custom drive letter seems like self-torture (although performance would be more than adequate for playing MP3s).
 
I guess that works with logical drives only? I always partition using primary partitions...

hmmm... Interesting. I didn't know you could do this.

Let me see if I got this correct. I could...

Partition a disk 4 ways - for example:
1 - Primary
2 - Secondary into 3 logical partitions.

Primary partition = C:\
Logical partition 1 = C:\Games
Logical Partition 2 = C:\My Documents
Logical Partition 3 = C:\Programs (not program files)

???

Interesting...

Good thread. 😀
 
I guess that works with logical drives only? I always partition using primary partitions...

Shouldn't matter, the only difference between logical partitions and primary partitions is the way they're described in the partition table.
 
The reason I figured - was the option to "mount in an NTFS folder" is grayed out on this computer.

I experimented on my testing PC. I had to "remove" the existing drive letter, then "Add" it, before it would give me the option to mount it in a folder.

But it worked!

Hmmm....

I wonder how Ghost or something like that would handle it? I mean, if you told it to make an "Image" of only the first partition? And then loaded that image on another computer? Any thoughts? Would the newly images PC try to mount the folder to the "potentially none-existant" partition?
 
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