Have you worked with folders that hides deeply in Windows and it’s really troublesome when you want to access the folder? Sometimes we’re unable to move the folder to desktop or at any convenient location because maybe the software requires it to be there as it is hardcoded or it can even act as a handy shortcut.

Good news is Windows allows you to define any drive letter that is not currently used to represent a physical drive as a virtual drive. Virtual drive is a folder of a physical drive that acts like it is a separate drive, unto itself. The concept is the same as mapping network drives. Only difference is it maps local folders instead of network shares.

Here’s how to map local folders or directories to drive letter.

There is a very old DOS command “SUBST“, which is short for substitute that allows you to substitute a folder on your computer for another drive letter. SUBST is an external command and surprisingly it was available since MS-DOS 3.1 up till XP. (I haven’t test this on Vista yet).

Let’s say I very frequently need to access “Data” folder in C:\Google\Is\King and now I want to map it to a X: drive which is currently unused. The command I should use in command prompt (cmd) is:

SUBST X: C:\Google\Is\King\Data

Map local folder to drive letter

To find out what virtual drives are currently defined, just type SUBST on a line by itself. If you want to remove the association, you can either restart your computer which will clear the SUBST command or use the /D switch. (Example, SUBST X: /D)

If you don’t know how to types those command, here’s an even easier method. Just download the free, small and portable Virtual Subst created by NTWind Software.

Retain subst command after restart

Visual Subst is a small tool that allows you to associate the most accessed directories with virtual drives. It uses the same API similar to the console ‘subst’ utility, but makes it easier to create and remove virtual drives in a GUI way. Just select the drive letter you want it to map, then click the magnifying glass icon to browse the folder that you want to map and click the plus icon. There is a checkbox which you can apply virtual drives on Windows startup. Remember that the DOS SUBST command doesn’t retain the substitute command after restart.

[ Download Virtual Subst ]

[tags]virtual, subst, substitute, map, drive[/tags]