If you connect your drive to the computer you get the drive letter of the first free letter. that can differ between the systems you use. Some people want/need a fixed drive letter for their portable drive (thread). Drive B: is normally unused on most computer. So the idea of some people was simple: Mount the portable drive to a virtual drive. Windows itself got all tools (normally) onboard. It is done by subst.exe.
This small app mount your portable drive virtual to drive B: (no selection possible).
Download VirtualDriveSet Portable
cu & hf
Dijaboro
ps: thanks to MarkoMLM for help
this means that if we want to install a desktop app into the pam, this makes it much easyer. being because the installer of most if not all programs tells the programs what drive it is on to if the usb has a fixed drive letter then more apps will be portable and we will have to fiddle less with the programs!! YAY! \(^^)/
Zoop
... i am using and double clicking does not seem to be doing anything,
I am using a xp SP2 limited account.
Please search before posting. ~Thanks
Yep, it does exactly what it says. Is there a way to have the B:\ as default but be able to change it to another letter? maybe editing an ini or something like that.
"In three words I can sum up everything I've learned about life: it goes on." -- Robert Frost
"In three words I can sum up everything I've learned about life: baby ain't mine." -- Adam Holguin
its bad to use b cause Johns installers all ignore b as a location for the portableapps stuff...
"What about Love?" - "Overrated. Biochemically no different than eating large quantities of chocolate." - Al Pacino in The Devils Advocate
with installing a new app. It works from options as from the installer itself.At least with admin rights on windows XP and with PAM 1.1ß4 .
But as mentioned below, there are some issues with somewhat virtual Drive B as with other drive names.
Safely removing is set to the virtual drive B, it works, the flash drive is ejected safe, but as for leaving no traces behind, drive B appears in the explorer as not responding until you plug in anew. So You have to start the utility once on every machine You´ll work on and it recognizes every Flash drive on the default letter eg E:\, but if You click on B in the explorer, You can start it as B.
Different people working on the same PC and not knowing of Your patch can´t safely remove their own, because in explorer it´s displayed as drive E:\ but in safely remove it´s called B :\.
So, in order to leave nothing behind, You should also create the undo version as separate utility or in one app with alternating switch on and off? I tried out smithtechs .batfile solution and removed the drive B afterwards.
So, finally it´s a patch for XP and other OS, wonder if it works with restricted user rights, had no chance to try out so far.
"Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipisici elit, sed eiusmod tempor incidunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis .." Friday Next -
"May The Schwartz be with You!" Yogurt the Yoda
I was wrong...:)
"What about Love?" - "Overrated. Biochemically no different than eating large quantities of chocolate." - Al Pacino in The Devils Advocate
how do you remove the substitution? BTW, I had already done something similar a few months back.
"In three words I can sum up everything I've learned about life: it goes on." -- Robert Frost
"In three words I can sum up everything I've learned about life: baby ain't mine." -- Adam Holguin
subst.exe /D
cowsay Moo
cowthink 'Dude, why are you staring at me.'
got it to work
Please search before posting. ~Thanks
Mine made a clone of my C drive[sata], with the drive letter B. If I put something in the C. drive, it is also in its clone.
I rebooted the computer, and the clone was gone. I started up the program again, and it cloned my thumb drive.
Am I just using the program wrong? or is this an error?
Cause you executed the VDS from your hd, no?
The program will clone driver letter of it is in.
I see. Thanks.
Dijaboro, thank you for putting this together, it's a very handy solution to a specific problem.
I wonder, is it possible to manually set the drive letter to something other than B:? After installing VirtualDriveSet, I looked for any configuration or .ini files but wasn't able to see any options. If I preferred to use a different drive letter, can I change this in the program, or is this beyond its capabilities?
Thanks for any help
the base idea was a branded drive letter. i think about a ini file. but this will take some time.
search subst
or do
subst /?
in cmd
Please search before posting. ~Thanks