Broken Shortcut solutions

A company laptop died and I am in the process of recovering data from the old hard drive to a new one.

I have a large number of shortcuts to files which were stored in a folder titled DATA on a separate volume marked as drive "D" in the old hard drive (which was a partition of the main hard drive) so location D:\DATA

On the new laptop's hard drive, there is no partition with a separate volume. The files are copied on to the main drive C for now, in a folder titled "DATA (C:\DATA)

(As a side note, I know I could partition :C and create a new volume, label it D: and move the files there, but I have several reasons not to do so) my question is:

1: Is there anyway I could create a virtual volume of some kind, label it D: and associate the folder (C:\DATA) to that volume? so when I open the shortcuts they will be redirected there

2: Is there any program that will change the target location of each shortcut file ... for example from D:\DATA\file1.doc to C:\DATA\file1.doc

You can create a Virtual Hard Disk and assign a D drive letter and create a Symbolic link to point to C:\Data folder from D: virtual hard disk.




How to Create a Virtual Hard Drive in Windows 7

The Complete Guide to Creating Symbolic Links (aka Symlinks) on Windows

Another thing you could do is use the SUBST command.

Open a command prompt.
Type SUBST D: C:\

Now you will have two names for the C: drive: C: and D:. And you can use either one at any time.

If you want to cancel the substitution before you log out of Windows, type SUBST D: /D (/D is for "delete").

Go to a command prompt and type SUBST /? for more information.


Note: If you already have a D: drive (such as a CD Rom drive), it would probably take that drive letter away from that device and assign it to the substitution.

You'll need to run this command whenever you log in to Windows, because it isn't a permanent substitution.