How to Mount a Hard Drive or Partition as a Folder in Windows 7
Information
This will show you how to mount an existing NTFS drive or partition as a VHD folder in Windows 7. By doing so, this will allow you to use a hard-drive as a normal folder on your main system drive.
This method comes in handy if you made your original system drive too small for your growing software needs or if you just want to be able to access multiple drives via one single drive letter.
Here's How:
1. Create a new folder in 'Drive C' with an appropriate name.
2. Right click on Computer on Desktop or Start-Menu and click on Manage.
3. Click on Disk Management in the left hand pane.
4. Right click on the drive you wish to mount in the middle pane, and click on Change Drive Letter and Paths...
5. In the dialog that pops up click on the add... button.
6. In the new window that pops up click on Browse...
7. In this new dialog navigate to the new folder you created earlier.
8. Click on OK on all of the windows that opened during this tutorial.
This is how my drive space looked before...
This is how my drives free space looks now after installing Test Drive Unlimited which is 6Gb big to the location C:\ProgramsEXT\TDU. NOTE:Notice how the 6Gb has been added to my drive M instead of drive C.
Information
If you delete the newly created folder with stuff inside it, the 'virtual' folder is all you delete. any programs or data placed in seperate drives via this method remain in the other drives after deleting the folder.
Need more help? Try searching our extensive help and support site.
Loading
27 May 2009
Night Hawk
Seems to work well here! In fact I just changed the attributes from read only in order to be allowed to copy to as well as from the main storage drive separated from the C drive entirely. It will be interesting to see how that works oiut as well.
OS Windows 7 Ultimate x64, XP Mode, W8 RP VM, Linux Mint Debian 2nd OS HD- 7 Pro x64 second case CPU AMD Phenom II X4 975 Deneb 3.6ghz - 965 on new mini tower Motherboard Gigabyte GA-790XTA-UD4 Memory Kingston Hyper X DDR3 1600 1.5v 16gb - Mushkin on 2nd build Graphics Card MSI HD Radeon 5750 1gb - MSI HD Radeon 6450 on mini tower Sound Card Creative Labs X-Fi XtremeGamer - Realtek onooard 2nd case Monitor(s) Displays 2 x Acer P191W 19" widesscreen - HP 20" widescreen mini towe Screen Resolution 1440x900 native - 1600x1024 on 7 Pro x64 build
Keyboard Microsoft Recusa Razor - MS Comfort 3000 on second build Mouse MS Trackball Explorer - A4TECH dual scroll wheel trackball PSU Corsair 750TX - primary / Corsair CX600 - second Case Antec 900-2 - SSD compatible / NZXT Vulcan mini tower Cooling Zalman CNPS9900A Hard Drives Primary Ultimate x64 build-
WD Black Edition 1tb Sata 6.0 = 2
WD Black Edition 1tb Sata 3.0 = 2 (OS drives)
WD 1tb Green Power sata = 2 1 external
usb flash drives = 18
Second 7 Pro x64 mini tower-
WD Caviar SE 500gb sata II single drive presen Internet Speed 30mbps upgrade - primary hard wired - mini tower usb WiFi
Very nice tutorial. Now if they would just let you mount ISO's and other disc image standard natively without 3rd party software, they will be fairly close to Linux functionality. They did give us native ISO burning and that is a huge step in the right direction, so if I nag and send enough feedback, they might even listen.
I just saw the 1tb storage mounted on Vista Home Premium 32bit as well. The difference seen in the total drive space used was only 1gb! It works for those still running both!
OS Windows 7 Ultimate x64, XP Mode, W8 RP VM, Linux Mint Debian 2nd OS HD- 7 Pro x64 second case CPU AMD Phenom II X4 975 Deneb 3.6ghz - 965 on new mini tower Motherboard Gigabyte GA-790XTA-UD4 Memory Kingston Hyper X DDR3 1600 1.5v 16gb - Mushkin on 2nd build Graphics Card MSI HD Radeon 5750 1gb - MSI HD Radeon 6450 on mini tower Sound Card Creative Labs X-Fi XtremeGamer - Realtek onooard 2nd case Monitor(s) Displays 2 x Acer P191W 19" widesscreen - HP 20" widescreen mini towe Screen Resolution 1440x900 native - 1600x1024 on 7 Pro x64 build
Keyboard Microsoft Recusa Razor - MS Comfort 3000 on second build Mouse MS Trackball Explorer - A4TECH dual scroll wheel trackball PSU Corsair 750TX - primary / Corsair CX600 - second Case Antec 900-2 - SSD compatible / NZXT Vulcan mini tower Cooling Zalman CNPS9900A Hard Drives Primary Ultimate x64 build-
WD Black Edition 1tb Sata 6.0 = 2
WD Black Edition 1tb Sata 3.0 = 2 (OS drives)
WD 1tb Green Power sata = 2 1 external
usb flash drives = 18
Second 7 Pro x64 mini tower-
WD Caviar SE 500gb sata II single drive presen Internet Speed 30mbps upgrade - primary hard wired - mini tower usb WiFi
I found this very helpful and I was able to access the folders on the VHD in Windows File Manager. However, when I went to restart the Virtual Machine XP Mode it gave me an error. Detaching the VHD allowed me to run the VM again.
Is there a way to "have my cake and eat it too?" I have one critical application that only runs under VM and would like to be able to access the files on the VHD in Windows 7 without having to attach & reattach.
If this is not the correct place for this question, please advise.
How do you check the space usage and use disk tools on a drive that is *only* mounted as a folder? I don't see a way to do this, so I have to add drive letters to the partition as well to know when they are filling up.
System Manufacturer/Model Number EEE PC 1015PN OS Windows 7 Ultimate CPU Intel Atom 1.5 GHz Motherboard Integrated Memory 2GB Corsair DDR3 Graphics Card GMA350/Invidia Ion Sound Card Integrated Monitor(s) Displays LCD Screen Screen Resolution 1024x600
Keyboard Integrated Mouse Microsoft USB Optical for Notebooks PSU Integrated Case Integrated Cooling Integrated Fan Hard Drives Seagate 500GB SATA3 Internet Speed Fiber
How do you check the space usage and use disk tools on a drive that is *only* mounted as a folder? I don't see a way to do this, so I have to add drive letters to the partition as well to know when they are filling up.
right click on the folder and open Properties. On the general tab next to Mounted Volume press the Properties button.
Computer type PC/Desktop System Manufacturer/Model Number Hewlett-Packard/G62-107SA Notebook OS Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit 7601 Multiprocessor Free Service Pack 1 CPU Intel(R) Core(TM) i3 CPU M 330 @ 2.13GHz Motherboard Hewlett-Packard 1425 Memory 8 GB DDR3 Graphics Card Intel(R) HD Graphics Sound Card Realtek High Definition Audio Monitor(s) Displays Builtin Screen Resolution 1366 x 768 x 32 bits (4294967296 colors) @ 60 Hz
Mouse Microsoft Bluetooth Notebook Mouse 5000 Hard Drives 250 GB SATA Hard Disk Drive 7200 rpm
2TB Seagate GoFlex USB 2 Drive
1TB Iomega Prestige USB 2 Drive
1.5TB Iomega Prestige USB 2 Drive (Samsung)
1TB Iomega NAS. Internet Speed 60 Mbs download 3 Mbs upload Antivirus Norton 360 Browser Chrome