Comments on: Create persistent substituted drives (subst) in Windows

By: Sir Athos

Sir Athos — Sun, 09 May 2010 07:57:24 +0000

Looking more at psubst (it’s a script!) and the way it persists settings, it’s actually possible that the mapping will work both for user and administrator mode software, since it’s managed by Windows’ own Session Manager Subsystem (smss.exe).

Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subst) warns though that not all Windows processes will be able to use the virtual drive letters.

By: Sir Athos

Sir Athos — Sun, 09 May 2010 06:37:00 +0000

Awesome tip!

You can also create a .cmd file which contains all of your subst commands, and place a shortcut of it in your startup menu. This way you can run it twice, once as the normal user and once as admin, to make sure the drive letters are mapped equally (yes, each login session has a different set of drive mappings, so you need to map each one twice – at least under Windows 7).

I don’t think psubst handles that internally, that would be really nice though.

@Elf4God: shortcut collections work well if you stick with Windows Explorer. Try to use more advanced file managers (like Total Commander) or other software, and it becomes inconvenient quickly – hence the drive letter solution, which works universally.

By: Ester

Ester — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 22:05:57 +0000

Thanks for this tip! That’s really cool. I work with log files all the time and the path is very deep! A substituted drive has saved me a lot of time! Thanks.

By: Oscar

Oscar — Mon, 15 Feb 2010 20:39:22 +0000

sería posible hacer esto de manera inversa??? “subst C:\Datos\: Z” … O sea asignar el contenido de la unidad de red a la carpeta. Recompensa en serio a quien me diga cómo.

By: cripto

cripto — Tue, 08 Dec 2009 21:03:39 +0000

Hi I’m looking for a program that can do this, but require a login in order for the person to gain access to the drive? Is there something like that out there?

By: twomm

twomm — Wed, 02 Dec 2009 13:55:20 +0000

I think by P4 he means perforce

By: Elf4God

Elf4God — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 01:07:25 +0000

It’s worked excellent for me so far, no matter what the processor.

By: broon

broon — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 10:06:18 +0000

Shortcuts probably don’t work with apps like P4.

By: Elf4God

Elf4God — Wed, 12 Aug 2009 23:36:55 +0000

Exactly. I wrote the steps for the benefit of whoever reads this.

Anyway, a shortcut seems a lot easier than creating a persistent substituted drive. The point is easy access to your folder, right? I have a lot of folders categorized by different subjects and filled with shortcuts to the desired files. Say, I want my documents, videos, and web pages about programming in one place, but I want the videos to stay in the Videos folder, and I want my documents to stay in My Documents. What to do? Copying the whole vid, doc, etc., would be a waste of space, so I make send shortcuts of the stuff I need to the Programming folder I just made. The stuff stays put, but I can access all I need for programming by going to my new folder and using the shortcuts. Creating the persistant substituted drive is cool, really. But doesn’t seem to me to be the most efficient way to access files with long paths. Thanks anyway! ^^

By: Elf4God

Elf4God — Thu, 30 Jul 2009 19:20:29 +0000

This is interesting, but you could go the much simpler route to get to locations having a long file path:

1. Right click the target folder.
2. Select “Send To”
3. Select “Desktop (Shortcut)”
4. Go to your Desktop and find the new shortcut.
5. Right click on it.
6. Select “Cut”.
7. Navigate to wherever you want the shortcut to go.
8. Right click and select “Paste”.
9. If you want to rename it, right click, select “Rename”, and type away.

By: John

John — Sat, 27 Jun 2009 07:41:44 +0000

Isn’t this like a shortcut? Like when you right click a folder and say create shortcut.

By: Jenny

Jenny — Tue, 16 Jun 2009 19:44:17 +0000

This is totally cool. You tend to think of drive letters as really permanent and fixed. This gives you flexibility to do a bunch of stuff. Awesome.