Turning a directory into a drive letter can have several benefits, with the most obvious one being accessibility. Drives are for instance prominently placed in save and load dialog windows, and while it is possible to add folders to a sidebar or the favorites for a similar effect, accessing a drive letter instead is often the better choice.
Windows actually comes with the tools to create a virtual drive from any folder on one of the hard drives connected to the computer. We have explained that in detail in assign drive letters to folders, which explains how to do that with the subst command.
Still, some users may prefer to use a graphical user interface for this operation, and that is what Virtual Driver provides.
virtual driver
The program adds a new context menu entry to the folder right-click menu, allowing users to create a virtual drive out of the selected folder. The directory selected will remain in its position which means it stays accessible as before, but will furthermore become available as a drive letter.
The interface offers settings to select the drive letter, drive label and icon. There is furthermore an option to make the change temporary, which means just for the current session, or permanent.
Permanent folders can be unmapped at any time by right-clicking again, which will display the unmap virtual drive option.
Experienced computer users may prefer to use the command line tool subst instead, as it does not require additional software to be installed. Windows 64-bit users need to rely on subst, as Virtual Driver is only compatible with 32-bit editions of Windows.
The software program is available for download at the developer’s website. A similar program is Visual Subst which we have reviewed earlier as well.
Related Articles:
Associate Folders With Virtual DrivesAssign Drive Letters to Folders
Map SkyDrive, Dropbox, Google Drive To Drive Letters In Windows
USB Drive Letter Manager
WinArchiver Virtual Drive, Archive, Image And ISO File Mounter
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C:\Windows\System32>subst /?
Associates a path with a drive letter.
SUBST [drive1: [drive2:]path]
SUBST drive1: /D
drive1: Specifies a virtual drive to which you want to assign a path.
[drive2:]path Specifies a physical drive and path you want to assign to
a virtual drive.
/D Deletes a substituted (virtual) drive.
Type SUBST with no parameters to display a list of current virtual drives.
C:\Windows\System32>
I suppose the mention of ‘visual subst’ probably means most are aware of subst already. Delete away if you like.
The subst command will not take effect when reboot.
Well you can theoretically write a small batch and add it to autostart