What if the hard disk is partitioned into more than 26 sections in Windows?
As we know, in Windows the partition location is prefixed with [a-z]:. What happens if there are more than 26 partitions?
windows partitioning
edited Apr 1 '16 at 16:28
Ben N
29.7k1398145
asked Jun 7 '11 at 7:58
winuserwinuser
21335
add a comment |
As we know, in Windows the partition location is prefixed with [a-z]:. What happens if there are more than 26 partitions?
windows partitioning
edited Apr 1 '16 at 16:28
Ben N
29.7k1398145
asked Jun 7 '11 at 7:58
winuserwinuser
21335
add a comment |
As we know, in Windows the partition location is prefixed with [a-z]:. What happens if there are more than 26 partitions?
windows partitioning
edited Apr 1 '16 at 16:28
Ben N
29.7k1398145
asked Jun 7 '11 at 7:58
winuserwinuser
21335
As we know, in Windows the partition location is prefixed with [a-z]:. What happens if there are more than 26 partitions?
windows partitioning
windows partitioning
edited Apr 1 '16 at 16:28
Ben N
29.7k1398145
asked Jun 7 '11 at 7:58
winuserwinuser
21335
edited Apr 1 '16 at 16:28
Ben N
29.7k1398145
asked Jun 7 '11 at 7:58
winuserwinuser
21335
edited Apr 1 '16 at 16:28
Ben N
29.7k1398145
edited Apr 1 '16 at 16:28
Ben N
29.7k1398145
edited Apr 1 '16 at 16:28
Ben N
29.7k1398145
29.7k1398145
asked Jun 7 '11 at 7:58
winuserwinuser
21335
asked Jun 7 '11 at 7:58
winuserwinuser
21335
asked Jun 7 '11 at 7:58
winuserwinuser
21335
21335
add a comment |
add a comment |
3 Answers
3
active
oldest
votes
The drive letters you see are simply representations of the physical partitions available and can be represented by other means. You could only have up to 26 drive letters, but you are definitely able to have (and actually use) many more partitions.
In that case, you could link the drive to a directory on your system rather than a drive letter as, since Windows XP at least (and potentially earlier), it has been possible to mount a drive or partition under a directory in Windows. This would mean you could effectively have a folder containing all your drives that are not accessible by drive letter.
You would do this within the Disk Management administrative console.
To get to the console, go to (or right-click on "My Computer" -> "Manage" -> "Disk Management"):
Start > Run and type
diskmgmt.msc
If you right click a partition you would see a Change Drive Letter or Path option which where you can add or remove paths or drive letters for drives.
As a side not you will want to make sure that the folder that you are using is empty, when you mount a partition to that folder then you will only see the files and folders from that partition and any original files will be invisible. I suspect if you unmount the drive from that folder you will be able to see the original files again, but I don't know for certain.
Weird, I assumed that there would be some kind of limit on how many logical partitions you can have in an extended partition, but I can't actually find anything about it. I know you can only have four primary partitions.
This is an example drive that I have removed the drive letter from and instead assigned to a folder, the files on that drive are now accessible at C:TempTest and the drive no longer has a letter assigned to it:
edited Sep 15 '12 at 13:34
Peter Mortensen
8,376166185
answered Jun 7 '11 at 8:06
Mokubai♦Mokubai
57.8k16139157
5
Logical partitions are implemented as a linked list, so there is no theoretical limit to the number you can have.
– Ignacio Vazquez-Abrams
Jun 7 '11 at 8:25
1
You can't have more than 26 letters, period.
– Ignacio Vazquez-Abrams
Jun 7 '11 at 8:28
6
@Winuser, the 27th partition would not be able to have a drive letter and so you would have to assign it to a folder as I mentioned in my answer. The Disk Management console allows you to see unassigned partitions and then assign them to a folder as necessary. Have a look at i.technet.microsoft.com/dynimg/IC235918.png for an example of what you would see.
– Mokubai♦
Jun 7 '11 at 8:35
1
For what it's worth: If we are talking theoretical limits then there most definitely is such a limit. Each secondary partition takes a minimum of one sector for the partition itself (in these modern times where we don't do pointless cylinder alignment any more) and one (possibly two for some LVM schemes) sector(s) for the partition metadata. Since the container primary partition is limited to 2**32 sectors, at least one theoretical limit on the number of contained secondary partitions is fairly easy to deduce. (-:
– JdeBP
Jun 7 '11 at 9:09
1
You forgot to specify that mounting volumes as folders only works if the lettered drive is NTFS.
– Synetech
Sep 15 '12 at 13:53
|
show 13 more comments
Under DOS 3.3 at least you could get drives like [: i.e .the ASCII characters after Z.
This was using Novell and setting LASTDRIVE to some high letter.
So there might be a way of getting the 27th partition to have a character name.
edited May 29 '14 at 16:37
Kevin Panko
5,929113648
answered Jun 7 '11 at 9:51
MarkMark
5,0542229
10
Still can be done in WinNT usingsubst(which callsDefineDosDevice()), but most GUI programs won't recognize[:Usersand the like :(
– grawity
Jun 7 '11 at 10:32
I suspect that most programs, period, won't recognize paths such as[:Users, since the assumption is that drives are marked with a letter. There is, of course, the new style path format that's used for network drives (for example\ServerNamePath) that came into existence at about the same time as Windows 95 or thereabouts. Not sure if you could map an unlettered drive to such a path for use locally, though.
– RobH
May 29 '14 at 16:51
1
@grawity: It seems to even let you specify a space as a drive letter. Interesting.
– LawrenceC
May 29 '14 at 17:18
add a comment |
Little-known undocumented feature: you can use any drive "letter" you want with the mountvol command. First, use mountvol undecorated to get a list of present volumes with their \?Volume{GUID} paths. Then, you can do something like this:
mountvol -: \?Volume{7d0832b2-3d3a-4fe0-9473-9f7aaabc5a98}
-:
That - isn't a placeholder - it actually works as a drive identifier, and you can change your current drive in the command prompt to it, cd around, and do everything you'd expect to be able to do. As far as I can tell, every symbol except the space works.
Explorer won't let you browse in non-lettered drives, but you can open some programs on documents in them. notepad filename.ext works on the prompt from inside that drive, for instance. (But notepad -:filename.ext doesn't work from the Run dialog.)
answered Apr 1 '16 at 16:27
Ben NBen N
29.7k1398145
add a comment |
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3 Answers
3
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3 Answers
3
active
oldest
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active
oldest
votes
active
oldest
votes
The drive letters you see are simply representations of the physical partitions available and can be represented by other means. You could only have up to 26 drive letters, but you are definitely able to have (and actually use) many more partitions.
In that case, you could link the drive to a directory on your system rather than a drive letter as, since Windows XP at least (and potentially earlier), it has been possible to mount a drive or partition under a directory in Windows. This would mean you could effectively have a folder containing all your drives that are not accessible by drive letter.
You would do this within the Disk Management administrative console.
To get to the console, go to (or right-click on "My Computer" -> "Manage" -> "Disk Management"):
Start > Run and type
diskmgmt.msc
If you right click a partition you would see a Change Drive Letter or Path option which where you can add or remove paths or drive letters for drives.
As a side not you will want to make sure that the folder that you are using is empty, when you mount a partition to that folder then you will only see the files and folders from that partition and any original files will be invisible. I suspect if you unmount the drive from that folder you will be able to see the original files again, but I don't know for certain.
Weird, I assumed that there would be some kind of limit on how many logical partitions you can have in an extended partition, but I can't actually find anything about it. I know you can only have four primary partitions.
This is an example drive that I have removed the drive letter from and instead assigned to a folder, the files on that drive are now accessible at C:TempTest and the drive no longer has a letter assigned to it:
edited Sep 15 '12 at 13:34
Peter Mortensen
8,376166185
answered Jun 7 '11 at 8:06
Mokubai♦Mokubai
57.8k16139157
5
Logical partitions are implemented as a linked list, so there is no theoretical limit to the number you can have.
– Ignacio Vazquez-Abrams
Jun 7 '11 at 8:25
1
You can't have more than 26 letters, period.
– Ignacio Vazquez-Abrams
Jun 7 '11 at 8:28
6
@Winuser, the 27th partition would not be able to have a drive letter and so you would have to assign it to a folder as I mentioned in my answer. The Disk Management console allows you to see unassigned partitions and then assign them to a folder as necessary. Have a look at i.technet.microsoft.com/dynimg/IC235918.png for an example of what you would see.
– Mokubai♦
Jun 7 '11 at 8:35
1
For what it's worth: If we are talking theoretical limits then there most definitely is such a limit. Each secondary partition takes a minimum of one sector for the partition itself (in these modern times where we don't do pointless cylinder alignment any more) and one (possibly two for some LVM schemes) sector(s) for the partition metadata. Since the container primary partition is limited to 2**32 sectors, at least one theoretical limit on the number of contained secondary partitions is fairly easy to deduce. (-:
– JdeBP
Jun 7 '11 at 9:09
1
You forgot to specify that mounting volumes as folders only works if the lettered drive is NTFS.
– Synetech
Sep 15 '12 at 13:53
|
show 13 more comments
The drive letters you see are simply representations of the physical partitions available and can be represented by other means. You could only have up to 26 drive letters, but you are definitely able to have (and actually use) many more partitions.
In that case, you could link the drive to a directory on your system rather than a drive letter as, since Windows XP at least (and potentially earlier), it has been possible to mount a drive or partition under a directory in Windows. This would mean you could effectively have a folder containing all your drives that are not accessible by drive letter.
You would do this within the Disk Management administrative console.
To get to the console, go to (or right-click on "My Computer" -> "Manage" -> "Disk Management"):
Start > Run and type
diskmgmt.msc
If you right click a partition you would see a Change Drive Letter or Path option which where you can add or remove paths or drive letters for drives.
As a side not you will want to make sure that the folder that you are using is empty, when you mount a partition to that folder then you will only see the files and folders from that partition and any original files will be invisible. I suspect if you unmount the drive from that folder you will be able to see the original files again, but I don't know for certain.
Weird, I assumed that there would be some kind of limit on how many logical partitions you can have in an extended partition, but I can't actually find anything about it. I know you can only have four primary partitions.
This is an example drive that I have removed the drive letter from and instead assigned to a folder, the files on that drive are now accessible at C:TempTest and the drive no longer has a letter assigned to it:
edited Sep 15 '12 at 13:34
Peter Mortensen
8,376166185
answered Jun 7 '11 at 8:06
Mokubai♦Mokubai
57.8k16139157
5
Logical partitions are implemented as a linked list, so there is no theoretical limit to the number you can have.
– Ignacio Vazquez-Abrams
Jun 7 '11 at 8:25
1
You can't have more than 26 letters, period.
– Ignacio Vazquez-Abrams
Jun 7 '11 at 8:28
6
@Winuser, the 27th partition would not be able to have a drive letter and so you would have to assign it to a folder as I mentioned in my answer. The Disk Management console allows you to see unassigned partitions and then assign them to a folder as necessary. Have a look at i.technet.microsoft.com/dynimg/IC235918.png for an example of what you would see.
– Mokubai♦
Jun 7 '11 at 8:35
1
For what it's worth: If we are talking theoretical limits then there most definitely is such a limit. Each secondary partition takes a minimum of one sector for the partition itself (in these modern times where we don't do pointless cylinder alignment any more) and one (possibly two for some LVM schemes) sector(s) for the partition metadata. Since the container primary partition is limited to 2**32 sectors, at least one theoretical limit on the number of contained secondary partitions is fairly easy to deduce. (-:
– JdeBP
Jun 7 '11 at 9:09
1
You forgot to specify that mounting volumes as folders only works if the lettered drive is NTFS.
– Synetech
Sep 15 '12 at 13:53
|
show 13 more comments
The drive letters you see are simply representations of the physical partitions available and can be represented by other means. You could only have up to 26 drive letters, but you are definitely able to have (and actually use) many more partitions.
In that case, you could link the drive to a directory on your system rather than a drive letter as, since Windows XP at least (and potentially earlier), it has been possible to mount a drive or partition under a directory in Windows. This would mean you could effectively have a folder containing all your drives that are not accessible by drive letter.
You would do this within the Disk Management administrative console.
To get to the console, go to (or right-click on "My Computer" -> "Manage" -> "Disk Management"):
Start > Run and type
diskmgmt.msc
If you right click a partition you would see a Change Drive Letter or Path option which where you can add or remove paths or drive letters for drives.
As a side not you will want to make sure that the folder that you are using is empty, when you mount a partition to that folder then you will only see the files and folders from that partition and any original files will be invisible. I suspect if you unmount the drive from that folder you will be able to see the original files again, but I don't know for certain.
Weird, I assumed that there would be some kind of limit on how many logical partitions you can have in an extended partition, but I can't actually find anything about it. I know you can only have four primary partitions.
This is an example drive that I have removed the drive letter from and instead assigned to a folder, the files on that drive are now accessible at C:TempTest and the drive no longer has a letter assigned to it:
edited Sep 15 '12 at 13:34
Peter Mortensen
8,376166185
answered Jun 7 '11 at 8:06
Mokubai♦Mokubai
57.8k16139157
The drive letters you see are simply representations of the physical partitions available and can be represented by other means. You could only have up to 26 drive letters, but you are definitely able to have (and actually use) many more partitions.
In that case, you could link the drive to a directory on your system rather than a drive letter as, since Windows XP at least (and potentially earlier), it has been possible to mount a drive or partition under a directory in Windows. This would mean you could effectively have a folder containing all your drives that are not accessible by drive letter.
You would do this within the Disk Management administrative console.
To get to the console, go to (or right-click on "My Computer" -> "Manage" -> "Disk Management"):
Start > Run and type
diskmgmt.msc
If you right click a partition you would see a Change Drive Letter or Path option which where you can add or remove paths or drive letters for drives.
As a side not you will want to make sure that the folder that you are using is empty, when you mount a partition to that folder then you will only see the files and folders from that partition and any original files will be invisible. I suspect if you unmount the drive from that folder you will be able to see the original files again, but I don't know for certain.
Weird, I assumed that there would be some kind of limit on how many logical partitions you can have in an extended partition, but I can't actually find anything about it. I know you can only have four primary partitions.
This is an example drive that I have removed the drive letter from and instead assigned to a folder, the files on that drive are now accessible at C:TempTest and the drive no longer has a letter assigned to it:
edited Sep 15 '12 at 13:34
Peter Mortensen
8,376166185
answered Jun 7 '11 at 8:06
Mokubai♦Mokubai
57.8k16139157
edited Sep 15 '12 at 13:34
Peter Mortensen
8,376166185
edited Sep 15 '12 at 13:34
Peter Mortensen
8,376166185
edited Sep 15 '12 at 13:34
Peter Mortensen
8,376166185
8,376166185
answered Jun 7 '11 at 8:06
Mokubai♦Mokubai
57.8k16139157
answered Jun 7 '11 at 8:06
Mokubai♦Mokubai
57.8k16139157
answered Jun 7 '11 at 8:06
Mokubai♦Mokubai
57.8k16139157
57.8k16139157
5
Logical partitions are implemented as a linked list, so there is no theoretical limit to the number you can have.
– Ignacio Vazquez-Abrams
Jun 7 '11 at 8:25
1
You can't have more than 26 letters, period.
– Ignacio Vazquez-Abrams
Jun 7 '11 at 8:28
6
@Winuser, the 27th partition would not be able to have a drive letter and so you would have to assign it to a folder as I mentioned in my answer. The Disk Management console allows you to see unassigned partitions and then assign them to a folder as necessary. Have a look at i.technet.microsoft.com/dynimg/IC235918.png for an example of what you would see.
– Mokubai♦
Jun 7 '11 at 8:35
1
For what it's worth: If we are talking theoretical limits then there most definitely is such a limit. Each secondary partition takes a minimum of one sector for the partition itself (in these modern times where we don't do pointless cylinder alignment any more) and one (possibly two for some LVM schemes) sector(s) for the partition metadata. Since the container primary partition is limited to 2**32 sectors, at least one theoretical limit on the number of contained secondary partitions is fairly easy to deduce. (-:
– JdeBP
Jun 7 '11 at 9:09
1
You forgot to specify that mounting volumes as folders only works if the lettered drive is NTFS.
– Synetech
Sep 15 '12 at 13:53
|
show 13 more comments
5
Logical partitions are implemented as a linked list, so there is no theoretical limit to the number you can have.
– Ignacio Vazquez-Abrams
Jun 7 '11 at 8:25
1
You can't have more than 26 letters, period.
– Ignacio Vazquez-Abrams
Jun 7 '11 at 8:28
6
@Winuser, the 27th partition would not be able to have a drive letter and so you would have to assign it to a folder as I mentioned in my answer. The Disk Management console allows you to see unassigned partitions and then assign them to a folder as necessary. Have a look at i.technet.microsoft.com/dynimg/IC235918.png for an example of what you would see.
– Mokubai♦
Jun 7 '11 at 8:35
1
For what it's worth: If we are talking theoretical limits then there most definitely is such a limit. Each secondary partition takes a minimum of one sector for the partition itself (in these modern times where we don't do pointless cylinder alignment any more) and one (possibly two for some LVM schemes) sector(s) for the partition metadata. Since the container primary partition is limited to 2**32 sectors, at least one theoretical limit on the number of contained secondary partitions is fairly easy to deduce. (-:
– JdeBP
Jun 7 '11 at 9:09
1
You forgot to specify that mounting volumes as folders only works if the lettered drive is NTFS.
– Synetech
Sep 15 '12 at 13:53
5
5
Logical partitions are implemented as a linked list, so there is no theoretical limit to the number you can have.
– Ignacio Vazquez-Abrams
Jun 7 '11 at 8:25
Logical partitions are implemented as a linked list, so there is no theoretical limit to the number you can have.
– Ignacio Vazquez-Abrams
Jun 7 '11 at 8:25
1
1
You can't have more than 26 letters, period.
– Ignacio Vazquez-Abrams
Jun 7 '11 at 8:28
You can't have more than 26 letters, period.
– Ignacio Vazquez-Abrams
Jun 7 '11 at 8:28
6
6
@Winuser, the 27th partition would not be able to have a drive letter and so you would have to assign it to a folder as I mentioned in my answer. The Disk Management console allows you to see unassigned partitions and then assign them to a folder as necessary. Have a look at i.technet.microsoft.com/dynimg/IC235918.png for an example of what you would see.
– Mokubai♦
Jun 7 '11 at 8:35
@Winuser, the 27th partition would not be able to have a drive letter and so you would have to assign it to a folder as I mentioned in my answer. The Disk Management console allows you to see unassigned partitions and then assign them to a folder as necessary. Have a look at i.technet.microsoft.com/dynimg/IC235918.png for an example of what you would see.
– Mokubai♦
Jun 7 '11 at 8:35
1
1
For what it's worth: If we are talking theoretical limits then there most definitely is such a limit. Each secondary partition takes a minimum of one sector for the partition itself (in these modern times where we don't do pointless cylinder alignment any more) and one (possibly two for some LVM schemes) sector(s) for the partition metadata. Since the container primary partition is limited to 2**32 sectors, at least one theoretical limit on the number of contained secondary partitions is fairly easy to deduce. (-:
– JdeBP
Jun 7 '11 at 9:09
For what it's worth: If we are talking theoretical limits then there most definitely is such a limit. Each secondary partition takes a minimum of one sector for the partition itself (in these modern times where we don't do pointless cylinder alignment any more) and one (possibly two for some LVM schemes) sector(s) for the partition metadata. Since the container primary partition is limited to 2**32 sectors, at least one theoretical limit on the number of contained secondary partitions is fairly easy to deduce. (-:
– JdeBP
Jun 7 '11 at 9:09
1
1
You forgot to specify that mounting volumes as folders only works if the lettered drive is NTFS.
– Synetech
Sep 15 '12 at 13:53
You forgot to specify that mounting volumes as folders only works if the lettered drive is NTFS.
– Synetech
Sep 15 '12 at 13:53
|
show 13 more comments
Under DOS 3.3 at least you could get drives like [: i.e .the ASCII characters after Z.
This was using Novell and setting LASTDRIVE to some high letter.
So there might be a way of getting the 27th partition to have a character name.
edited May 29 '14 at 16:37
Kevin Panko
5,929113648
answered Jun 7 '11 at 9:51
MarkMark
5,0542229
10
Still can be done in WinNT usingsubst(which callsDefineDosDevice()), but most GUI programs won't recognize[:Usersand the like :(
– grawity
Jun 7 '11 at 10:32
I suspect that most programs, period, won't recognize paths such as[:Users, since the assumption is that drives are marked with a letter. There is, of course, the new style path format that's used for network drives (for example\ServerNamePath) that came into existence at about the same time as Windows 95 or thereabouts. Not sure if you could map an unlettered drive to such a path for use locally, though.
– RobH
May 29 '14 at 16:51
1
@grawity: It seems to even let you specify a space as a drive letter. Interesting.
– LawrenceC
May 29 '14 at 17:18
add a comment |
Under DOS 3.3 at least you could get drives like [: i.e .the ASCII characters after Z.
This was using Novell and setting LASTDRIVE to some high letter.
So there might be a way of getting the 27th partition to have a character name.
edited May 29 '14 at 16:37
Kevin Panko
5,929113648
answered Jun 7 '11 at 9:51
MarkMark
5,0542229
10
Still can be done in WinNT usingsubst(which callsDefineDosDevice()), but most GUI programs won't recognize[:Usersand the like :(
– grawity
Jun 7 '11 at 10:32
I suspect that most programs, period, won't recognize paths such as[:Users, since the assumption is that drives are marked with a letter. There is, of course, the new style path format that's used for network drives (for example\ServerNamePath) that came into existence at about the same time as Windows 95 or thereabouts. Not sure if you could map an unlettered drive to such a path for use locally, though.
– RobH
May 29 '14 at 16:51
1
@grawity: It seems to even let you specify a space as a drive letter. Interesting.
– LawrenceC
May 29 '14 at 17:18
add a comment |
Under DOS 3.3 at least you could get drives like [: i.e .the ASCII characters after Z.
This was using Novell and setting LASTDRIVE to some high letter.
So there might be a way of getting the 27th partition to have a character name.
edited May 29 '14 at 16:37
Kevin Panko
5,929113648
answered Jun 7 '11 at 9:51
MarkMark
5,0542229
Under DOS 3.3 at least you could get drives like [: i.e .the ASCII characters after Z.
This was using Novell and setting LASTDRIVE to some high letter.
So there might be a way of getting the 27th partition to have a character name.
edited May 29 '14 at 16:37
Kevin Panko
5,929113648
answered Jun 7 '11 at 9:51
MarkMark
5,0542229
edited May 29 '14 at 16:37
Kevin Panko
5,929113648
edited May 29 '14 at 16:37
Kevin Panko
5,929113648
edited May 29 '14 at 16:37
Kevin Panko
5,929113648
5,929113648
answered Jun 7 '11 at 9:51
MarkMark
5,0542229
answered Jun 7 '11 at 9:51
MarkMark
5,0542229
answered Jun 7 '11 at 9:51
MarkMark
5,0542229
5,0542229
10
Still can be done in WinNT usingsubst(which callsDefineDosDevice()), but most GUI programs won't recognize[:Usersand the like :(
– grawity
Jun 7 '11 at 10:32
I suspect that most programs, period, won't recognize paths such as[:Users, since the assumption is that drives are marked with a letter. There is, of course, the new style path format that's used for network drives (for example\ServerNamePath) that came into existence at about the same time as Windows 95 or thereabouts. Not sure if you could map an unlettered drive to such a path for use locally, though.
– RobH
May 29 '14 at 16:51
1
@grawity: It seems to even let you specify a space as a drive letter. Interesting.
– LawrenceC
May 29 '14 at 17:18
add a comment |
10
Still can be done in WinNT usingsubst(which callsDefineDosDevice()), but most GUI programs won't recognize[:Usersand the like :(
– grawity
Jun 7 '11 at 10:32
I suspect that most programs, period, won't recognize paths such as[:Users, since the assumption is that drives are marked with a letter. There is, of course, the new style path format that's used for network drives (for example\ServerNamePath) that came into existence at about the same time as Windows 95 or thereabouts. Not sure if you could map an unlettered drive to such a path for use locally, though.
– RobH
May 29 '14 at 16:51
1
@grawity: It seems to even let you specify a space as a drive letter. Interesting.
– LawrenceC
May 29 '14 at 17:18
10
10
Still can be done in WinNT using
subst (which calls DefineDosDevice()), but most GUI programs won't recognize [:Users and the like :(– grawity
Jun 7 '11 at 10:32
Still can be done in WinNT using
subst (which calls DefineDosDevice()), but most GUI programs won't recognize [:Users and the like :(– grawity
Jun 7 '11 at 10:32
I suspect that most programs, period, won't recognize paths such as
[:Users, since the assumption is that drives are marked with a letter. There is, of course, the new style path format that's used for network drives (for example \ServerNamePath) that came into existence at about the same time as Windows 95 or thereabouts. Not sure if you could map an unlettered drive to such a path for use locally, though.– RobH
May 29 '14 at 16:51
I suspect that most programs, period, won't recognize paths such as
[:Users, since the assumption is that drives are marked with a letter. There is, of course, the new style path format that's used for network drives (for example \ServerNamePath) that came into existence at about the same time as Windows 95 or thereabouts. Not sure if you could map an unlettered drive to such a path for use locally, though.– RobH
May 29 '14 at 16:51
1
1
@grawity: It seems to even let you specify a space as a drive letter. Interesting.
– LawrenceC
May 29 '14 at 17:18
@grawity: It seems to even let you specify a space as a drive letter. Interesting.
– LawrenceC
May 29 '14 at 17:18
add a comment |
Little-known undocumented feature: you can use any drive "letter" you want with the mountvol command. First, use mountvol undecorated to get a list of present volumes with their \?Volume{GUID} paths. Then, you can do something like this:
mountvol -: \?Volume{7d0832b2-3d3a-4fe0-9473-9f7aaabc5a98}
-:
That - isn't a placeholder - it actually works as a drive identifier, and you can change your current drive in the command prompt to it, cd around, and do everything you'd expect to be able to do. As far as I can tell, every symbol except the space works.
Explorer won't let you browse in non-lettered drives, but you can open some programs on documents in them. notepad filename.ext works on the prompt from inside that drive, for instance. (But notepad -:filename.ext doesn't work from the Run dialog.)
answered Apr 1 '16 at 16:27
Ben NBen N
29.7k1398145
add a comment |
Little-known undocumented feature: you can use any drive "letter" you want with the mountvol command. First, use mountvol undecorated to get a list of present volumes with their \?Volume{GUID} paths. Then, you can do something like this:
mountvol -: \?Volume{7d0832b2-3d3a-4fe0-9473-9f7aaabc5a98}
-:
That - isn't a placeholder - it actually works as a drive identifier, and you can change your current drive in the command prompt to it, cd around, and do everything you'd expect to be able to do. As far as I can tell, every symbol except the space works.
Explorer won't let you browse in non-lettered drives, but you can open some programs on documents in them. notepad filename.ext works on the prompt from inside that drive, for instance. (But notepad -:filename.ext doesn't work from the Run dialog.)
answered Apr 1 '16 at 16:27
Ben NBen N
29.7k1398145
add a comment |
Little-known undocumented feature: you can use any drive "letter" you want with the mountvol command. First, use mountvol undecorated to get a list of present volumes with their \?Volume{GUID} paths. Then, you can do something like this:
mountvol -: \?Volume{7d0832b2-3d3a-4fe0-9473-9f7aaabc5a98}
-:
That - isn't a placeholder - it actually works as a drive identifier, and you can change your current drive in the command prompt to it, cd around, and do everything you'd expect to be able to do. As far as I can tell, every symbol except the space works.
Explorer won't let you browse in non-lettered drives, but you can open some programs on documents in them. notepad filename.ext works on the prompt from inside that drive, for instance. (But notepad -:filename.ext doesn't work from the Run dialog.)
answered Apr 1 '16 at 16:27
Ben NBen N
29.7k1398145
Little-known undocumented feature: you can use any drive "letter" you want with the mountvol command. First, use mountvol undecorated to get a list of present volumes with their \?Volume{GUID} paths. Then, you can do something like this:
mountvol -: \?Volume{7d0832b2-3d3a-4fe0-9473-9f7aaabc5a98}
-:
That - isn't a placeholder - it actually works as a drive identifier, and you can change your current drive in the command prompt to it, cd around, and do everything you'd expect to be able to do. As far as I can tell, every symbol except the space works.
Explorer won't let you browse in non-lettered drives, but you can open some programs on documents in them. notepad filename.ext works on the prompt from inside that drive, for instance. (But notepad -:filename.ext doesn't work from the Run dialog.)
answered Apr 1 '16 at 16:27
Ben NBen N
29.7k1398145
answered Apr 1 '16 at 16:27
Ben NBen N
29.7k1398145
answered Apr 1 '16 at 16:27
Ben NBen N
29.7k1398145
answered Apr 1 '16 at 16:27
Ben NBen N
29.7k1398145
29.7k1398145
add a comment |
add a comment |
protected by Community♦ Jan 24 at 8:41
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