NTFS file system 5.0 and later support volume mount points, which are directories on a volume that
an application can use to "mount" a different volume, that is, to set it up for use at the
location a user specifies. In other words, you can use a volume mount point as a gateway to a volume. When a
volume is mounted at a volume mount point, users and applications can see the mounted volume by the path of the
volume mount point or a drive letter. For example, with a volume mount point set, the user might see drive D as
"C:\Mnt\DDrive" as well as "D:".
Using volume mount points, you can unify disparate file systems such as the NTFS file system, a 16-bit FAT file
system, an ISO-9660 file system on a CD-ROM drive into one logical file system. Neither users nor applications
need information about the volume on which a specific file resides. All the information they need to locate a
specified file is a complete path. Volumes can be rearranged, substituted, or subdivided into many volumes
without users or applications needing to change settings.
For example, suppose you have a computer with four volumes on it. You have two partitions on a single hard
drive, a CD-ROM drive, and a removable media drive. In a conventional system, you might see these volumes as C,
D, E, and F, respectively. To use volume mount points, you might build a directory on C: called \Mnt as
follows:
MkDir C:\Mnt
Below that, you might build directories DDrive, CDRom, and Removable:
MkDir C:\Mnt\DDrive
MkDir C:\Mnt\CDRom
MkDir C:\Mnt\Removable
Then you might mount each volume at its volume mount point, using the MountVol command-line utility:
MountVol C:\Mnt\DDrive D:
MountVol C:\Mnt\CDRom E:
MountVol C:\Mnt\Removable F:
At this point, you can see the root directory of the removable drive as either F:\ or as C:\Mnt\Removable. You
can also see files on the mounted volume with a concatenated path. Thus, you can see the file
"D:\Program Files\Windows NT\Accessories\WordPad.exe" as
"C:\Mnt\DDrive\Program Files\Windows NT\Accessories\WordPad.exe".
For information on volume mount points, see the following topics:
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Build date: 10/2/2008