Configuring Mount Points

Any volume or partition can be mounted to an empty NTFS folder as long as the folder is on a fixed disk drive rather than a removable media drive. A volume or partition mounted in such a way is called a mount point. Each volume or partition can have multiple mount points associated with it. For example, you could mount a volume to the root folder of the C drive as both C:\EngData and C:\DevData, giving the appearance that these are separate folders.

The real value of mount points, however, lies in how they allow you the capability to create the appearance of a single file system from multiple hard disk drives without having to use spanned volumes. Consider the following scenario: A department file server has four data drives-drive 1, drive 2, drive 3, and drive 4. Rather than mount the drives as D, E, F, and G, you decide it'd be easier for users to work with the drives if they were all mounted as folders of the system drive, C:\Data. You mount drive 1 to C:\Data\User- Data, drive 2 to C:\Data\CorpData, drive 3 to C:\Data\Projects, and drive 4 to C:\Data\ History. If you were then to share the C:\Data folder, users would be able to access all the drives using a single share.

Note: The drives under C:\Data rather than C:\ as is recommended in some documentation? The primary reason I did this is to help safeguard system security. Users to have access to other directories, which includes the operating system directories, on the C drive.

To add or remove a mount point, right-click the volume or partition in Disk Management, and choose Change Drive Letter And Paths. This displays the Change Drive Letter And Paths dialog box, which shows any current mount point and mount points associated with the selected drive.

You now have the following options:

• Add a mount point: Click Add, then in the Add Drive Letter Or Path dialog box, select Mount In The Following Empty NTFS Folder. Type the path to an existing folder or click Browse to search for or create a folder. Click OK to mount the volume or partition.
• Remove a mount point: If you want to remove a mount point, select the mount point, and then click Remove. When prompted to confirm the action, click Yes.

Note: You can't change a mount point assignment after making it. You can, however, simply remove the mount point you want to change and then add a new mount point so that the volume or partition is mounted as appropriate.