How to Create Virtual Drive for Any Folder

Folders keep files enclosed so that you can find them out easily in future. Again, if you have too many folders, it is recommended that you enclose them into a parent folder. Too many parent folders? Then group them by their type or whatever else and keep in different drives (hard disk partition) in your computer. This is how you can safely organize your files and folders. Generally, you can create your desired number of partitions in your computer when running the Windows setup. But what, if you feel the necessity of an extra drive in future?

Suppose, you are a huge fan of Bollywood movies and you download numbers of movies every day. You would like to group them according to your choice. So, you put the movies into the folder named with the hero of the movie accordingly. You can create such folders in your hard disk partitions as many as you wish. Furthermore, you can create a folder named “Movies” in any of your hard drive and put them into that folder to make things organized.

In such a situation, what my guess is that you would prefer to create a different disk drive dedicated for the movies only. But, creating an additional drive without formatting is not permitted in all Windows operating system. Though you can partition hard disk in Windows 7 without formatting, that would be bit complex and risky task. Better, you create Virtual Drive for folder “Movie”. Creation of Virtual Drive is a better way to organize your most frequently used folders.

How to Create Virtual Drive For Folders

You can create different Virtual Drives for different folders by a simple DOS command. Here is the procedure.

• Press Win + R  key to open the “Run” dialogue box.
• Type “cmd” and hit “Enter”.

In the Command Prompt, type the following command :

subst <desired drive name>: <folder path>

For example:

subst j: E:WallpaperThemesAnimalsBirds

Now, the Virtual Drive will appear in My Computer window. The appearance of that drive will be exactly same as the other drives. You can now access the files under the folder directly from “My Computer“.

If you want to delete the Virtual Drive then just put the following command in the “Command Prompt”:

subst <virtual drive name>: /D

That’s all to create and delete the Virtual Drive for folders in Windows. But, if you restart your computer, the Virtual Drive vanishes automatically.

How to make the Virtual Drive permanent?

To make the Virtual Drive permanent in your computer, just apply a small but excellent tweak. Here, I’ve described that step-by-step.

Open Notepad and type the following batch commands.
echo off
cd
subst <desired drive name> : <folder path>

Replace “<desired drive name>” with your own choice, make sure that the drive name is not already assigned. Replace “<folder path>” with the location of the folder that you want to use as a virtual drive. Now save the Notepad file as vdrive.bat in C:>Windows > system32. The batch file will trigger that command whenever you run it.

Now, you’ll have to run the batch file automatically in start up. To do so, follow the steps below:

• Go to Start > Run and type regedit.
• Navigate to the following path in the registry editor:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE > SOFTWARE > Microsoft > Windows > CurrentVersion > Run

In the right pane, right-click and choose “New > String Value” to create a string value.

• Give the name as “vdrive”.
• Right-click on the string and select “Modify”.

• Put “c:windowssystem32vdrive.bat” In the value data field and click “OK”.

You are done! Restart the computer and see that the virtual drive has been created. This virtual drive is fixed and will be never deleted until you delete yourself.

The above method is applicable for Windows 7, XP and Windows Vista as well. Did you ever create Virtual Drive for folder in your computer? Let us know.