Mount a drive in a folder

Applies To: Windows 10, Windows 8.1, Windows Server 2019, Windows Server 2016, Windows Server 2012 R2, Windows Server 2012

You can use Disk Management to mount (make a drive accessible) in a folder rather than a drive letter if you want. This makes the drive appear as just another folder. You can mount drives only in empty folders on basic or dynamic NTFS volumes.

Mounting a drive in an empty folder

You must be a member of the Backup Operators or Administrators group, at minimum, to complete these steps.

To mount a drive in an empty folder by using the Windows interface

1. In Disk Manager, right-click the partition or volume that has the folder in which you want to mount the drive.
2. Click Change Drive Letter and Paths and then click Add.
3. Click Mount in the following empty NTFS folder.
4. Type the path to an empty folder on an NTFS volume, or click Browse to locate it.

To mount a drive in an empty folder using a command line

Open a command prompt and type diskpart .

At the DISKPART prompt, type list volume , making note of the volume number you want to assign the path to.

At the DISKPART prompt, type select volume , specifying the volume number that you want to assign the path to.

At the DISKPART prompt, type assign [mount=

To remove a mount point

To remove the mount point so that the drive is no longer accessible via a folder:

Подключение диска в папке Mount a drive in a folder

Относится к: Windows 10, Windows 8.1, Windows Server 2019, Windows Server 2016, Windows Server 2012 R2, Windows Server 2012. Applies To: Windows 10, Windows 8.1, Windows Server 2019, Windows Server 2016, Windows Server 2012 R2, Windows Server 2012

Вы можете использовать оснастку «Управление дисками» для подключения диска (предоставления доступа к нему) в папке, а не путем назначения ему буквы диска. You can use Disk Management to mount (make a drive accessible) in a folder rather than a drive letter if you want. В таком случае диск будет отображаться как обычная папка. This makes the drive appear as just another folder. Диски можно подключать только в пустых папках в базовых или динамических томах NTFS. You can mount drives only in empty folders on basic or dynamic NTFS volumes.

Подключение диска в пустой папке Mounting a drive in an empty folder

Для выполнения следующих шагов необходимо как минимум состоять в группе Операторы архива или Администраторы. You must be a member of the Backup Operators or Administrators group, at minimum, to complete these steps.

Подключение диска в пустой папке с помощью интерфейса Windows To mount a drive in an empty folder by using the Windows interface

1. В диспетчере дисков щелкните правой кнопкой мыши раздел или том, который содержит папку для подключения диска. In Disk Manager, right-click the partition or volume that has the folder in which you want to mount the drive.
2. Щелкните Изменить букву диска или путь к диску, а затем нажмите Добавить. Click Change Drive Letter and Paths and then click Add.
3. Щелкните Подключить к следующей пустой папке NTFS. Click Mount in the following empty NTFS folder.
4. Введите путь к пустой папке в томе NTFS или нажмите кнопку Обзор, чтобы найти ее. Type the path to an empty folder on an NTFS volume, or click Browse to locate it.

Подключение диска в пустой папке с помощью командной строки To mount a drive in an empty folder using a command line

Откройте командную строку и введите: diskpart . Open a command prompt and type diskpart .

В командной строке DISKPART введите list volume и запомните номер тома, которому требуется назначить путь. At the DISKPART prompt, type list volume , making note of the volume number you want to assign the path to.

В командной строке DISKPART введите select volume и укажите номер тома, которому требуется назначить путь. At the DISKPART prompt, type select volume , specifying the volume number that you want to assign the path to.

В командной строке DISKPART введите assign [mount=

] . At the DISKPART prompt, type assign [mount=

Удаление точки подключения To remove a mount point

Если вы хотите удалить точку подключения, чтобы доступ к диску нельзя было получить через папку, сделайте следующее: To remove the mount point so that the drive is no longer accessible via a folder:

How does one programmatically mount a drive in Windows?

We make and sell a device that our users will sometimes want to connect to their computer in large quantities with multiple USB hubs. It is a USB composite device that has both human interface (HID) and mass storage (MSD) interfaces. Windows automatically mounts the file-system of each device until it runs out of letters at ‘Z:’.

I can walk the device tree and get the device instance identifiers for the HID and USBSTOR interfaces using a combination of the PnP Configuration Manager and Device Installation functions. With the USB storage device path I can also get the disk number (i.e. \\.\PhysicalDrive1 ).

The next step would be to mount these disks as need by cycling out drive letters as we communicate with the devices, or better yet, mount them in temporary directories on the C: drive. I’m having difficulties attempting to use DefineDosDevice for this task and cannot make headway with SetVolumeMountPoint since a device does not have a Volume GUID until it is mounted. That presents a chicken and egg problem.

If only our customers used unix.

2 Answers 2

Windows does not mount disks; it mounts volumes. However, the volume for a USBSTOR class device is not listed as a child node in the device tree. Therefore, you have to enumerate all volumes and and do a bunch of string manipulation and comparisons to match up STORAGE\VOLUME nodes with USBSTOR nodes.

All volume GUID values are enumerated with the FindFirstVolume set of functions. The leading «\.\» and trailing «\» characters can be stripped and the resulting string then passed to QueryDosDevice. This provides a device name.

Next, one must enumerate all volumes using GUID_DEVINTERFACE_VOLUME with SetupDiGetClassDevs and friends. Compare the device type and number of each volume to the USBSTOR device you are looking for using IOCTL_STORAGE_GET_DEVICE_NUMBER. Once those are matched, you can get the device name from the volume and compare that to the other list of device names to find the volume GUID.

Finally, the volume GUID can be successfully used with SetVolumeMountPoint.

Thanks to Gabe for his very helpful assistance in the comments to my question.

Code Snippets

Get device type and number from device path:

Find the device name for the corresponding USBSTOR instance by iterating over all volume interfaces and comparing the disk number from the above snippet:

mount point

A mount point is a directory in a file system where additional information is logically connected from a storage location outside the operating system’s root drive and partition.

To mount, in this context, is to make a group of files in a file system structure accessible to a user or user group. In some usages, it means to make a device physically accessible. For instance, in data storage, to mount is to place a data medium on a drive in a position to operate.

Whether it comes from a partition on the same drive, a new hard drive, media inserted into an optical drive, a NAS (network-attached storage) or SAN (storage-area network) device or some form of flash memory, any file system must be mounted before it can be displayed and its file system read. Only then can the operating system understand the correct format to write files to the medium for the given file system.

Mount points enable reading from and writing to all manner of storage outside an operating system’s file system by maintaining special directories where the information in a number of volume’s file systems can be connected (mounted).

These special, typically empty, directories become the root directories of the mounted volumes’ file system. Any content the mount points may have had is invisible until the mounted volume is ejected. The metadata provided with the volume’s own information allows supporting operating systems to read and interpret the file system on the volume and present its directory structure and file contents in the mount point (now the newly mounted drive’s root).

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Creating Mount Points and Links in Microsoft Windows Server 2012 April 18, 2013

In the presentation, we look at configuring Mount Points and Links.

Mount points are used in Windows operating systems to make a portion of a disk or the entire disk useable by the operating system. Most commonly, mount points are associated with drive-letter mappings so that the operating system can gain access to the disk through the drive letter.

Since the Windows 2000 Server was first introduced, you have been able to enable volume mount points, which you can then use to mount a hard disk to an empty folder that is located on another drive. For example, if you add a new hard disk to a server, rather than mounting the drive using a drive letter, you can assign a folder name such as C:\datadrive to the drive. When you do this, any time you access the C:\datadrive folder, you are actually accessing the new hard disk.

Volume mount points can be useful in the following scenarios:

If you are running out of drive space on a server and you want to add disk space without modifying the folder structure. You can add the hard disk, and configure a folder to point to the hard disk.

If you are running out of available letters to assign to partitions or volumes. If you have several hard disks that are attached to the server, you may run out of available letters in the alphabet to which to assign drive letters. By using a volume mount point, you can add additional partitions or volumes without using more drive letters.

If you need to separate disk input/output (I/O) within a folder structure. For example, if you are using an application that requires a specific file structure, but which uses the hard disks extensively, you can separate the disk I/O by creating a volume mount point within the folder structure.

A link is a special type of file that contains a reference to another file or directory in the form of an absolute or relative path. Windows supports the following two types of links:

A symbolic file link (also known as a soft link)

A symbolic directory link (also known as a directory junction)

A link that is stored on a server share could refer back to a directory on a client that is not actually accessible from the server where the link is stored. Because the link processing is done from the client, the link would work correctly to access the client, even though the server cannot access the client.

Links operate transparently. Applications that read or write to files that are named by a link behave as if they are operating directly on the target file. For example, you can use a symbolic link to link to a Hyper-

V parent virtual hard disk file (.vhd) from another location. Hyper-V uses the link to work with the parent virtual hard disk (VHD) as it would the original file. The benefit of using symbolic links is that you do not need to modify the properties of your differencing VHD.

Links are sometimes easier to manage than mount points. Mount points force you to place the files on the root of the volumes, whereas with links you can be more flexible with where you save files.

You can create links by using the mklink.exe command-line tool.

The demonstration is available at the BryanQA Youtube site