Comments on: CyberNotes: Assign Driver Letters to Folders in Windows

By: Mark

Mark — Fri, 12 Jun 2009 04:20:46 +0000

Very informative article. Thank you!

In my search for a solution like this I came across another neat approach which doesn’t involve any batch file or executable (only installation program that tweaks something in the system and never needs to be run again). I don’t know how they do that:

[softwarecandy.com]

Out of curiosity, with the 50% automatic discount when creating a new account and the low price for this little utility (I paid only $1.50) I actually downloaded it and was impressed by the original approach.

It worked for me on Windows XP and Windows 7 (don’t know about Vista. I skipped Vista).

Mark

By: Ryan

Ryan — Fri, 18 Jul 2008 20:33:45 +0000

Brian wrote:

Yep, I can see all mapped network drives in both views (from within an application and from within Windows Explorer).

That's interesting. The drive showed up in Windows Explorer almost immediately after creating it. I didn't even have to close Windows Explorer to see the changes. Must just be some sort of bug. Sorry I couldn't help ya.

By: Brian

Brian — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 21:21:29 +0000

Ryan wrote:

Brian wrote:
Great tip! I haven’t used SUBST in a long, long time! One strange thing is happening. I have the BAT file in my Startup folder and the new drive letters show up in any application’s Open or Save dialogs BUT it doesn’t show up in Windows Explorer all the time. Any ideas why?
Huh, that didn’t happen to me at all. Do you know if you can get a mapped network drive to show up?

Thanks for replying! Yep, I can see all mapped network drives in both views (from within an application and from within Windows Explorer).

By: Ryan

Ryan — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 20:17:51 +0000

Brian wrote:

Great tip! I haven’t used SUBST in a long, long time! One strange thing is happening. I have the BAT file in my Startup folder and the new drive letters show up in any application’s Open or Save dialogs BUT it doesn’t show up in Windows Explorer all the time. Any ideas why?

Huh, that didn't happen to me at all. Do you know if you can get a mapped network drive to show up?

By: Brian

Brian — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 16:31:24 +0000

Great tip! I haven’t used SUBST in a long, long time! One strange thing is happening. I have the BAT file in my Startup folder and the new drive letters show up in any application’s Open or Save dialogs BUT it doesn’t show up in Windows Explorer all the time. Any ideas why?

By: Ryan

Ryan — Fri, 04 Jul 2008 16:21:17 +0000

x wrote:

Ryan wrote:
We mentioned that in our overview at the end of the article, but there’s no need to have a full application always running to do something like this..
No, it just sets up the configured drives at startup and exits (just like the batch file)

Ahh, I didn't realize it exited immediately after configuration. That's not so bad then.

By: x

Fri, 04 Jul 2008 03:29:13 +0000

The down side to the app is that it needs to run whenever your computer starts in order to assign the driver letters to the folders. The BAT file also needs to run at startup..

Ryan wrote:

We mentioned that in our overview at the end of the article, but there’s no need to have a full application always running to do something like this..

No, it just sets up the configured drives at startup and exits (just like the batch file)

By: Ryan

Ryan — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 21:30:16 +0000

Gianni wrote:

Take a look at the following free software, it is fully compatible with subst! Visual Subst - virtual drives in effect - NTWind Software http://www.ntwind.com/software.....subst.html

We mentioned that in our overview at the end of the article, but there's no need to have a full application always running to do something like this. That's why we wanted to put together the tutorial.

Jean-Francois Messier wrote:

This SUBST program is something I was using looooooooong time ago, back in the 90’s, when only MSDOS and command-line (no Windows or mouse !) was available and hard disks size was measured in MEGAbytes, not GIGAbytes. My main use of this was to add more directories to the PATH environment variable, which was limited to 256 characters. Using a drive letter was way shorter than a complete path. So I could cram more locations in this PATH. But this is nothing new, except perhaps for those who were born with a mouse.

I've been using it for a long time as well, but I asked around before writing the article and there were quite a few people who had never heard of it. Of course you really have to be familiar with the command line to know things like this.

By: Jean-Francois Messier

Jean-Francois Messier — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 15:12:52 +0000

This SUBST program is something I was using looooooooong time ago, back in the 90’s, when only MSDOS and command-line (no Windows or mouse !) was available and hard disks size was measured in MEGAbytes, not GIGAbytes. My main use of this was to add more directories to the PATH environment variable, which was limited to 256 characters. Using a drive letter was way shorter than a complete path. So I could cram more locations in this PATH. But this is nothing new, except perhaps for those who were born with a mouse.

By: Gianni

Gianni — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 12:48:57 +0000

Take a look at the following free software, it is fully compatible with subst!

Visual Subst – virtual drives in effect – NTWind Software
[ntwind.com]