Creating the My Pictures folder as a mount point for another drive

[charlie_le_chat]

I have three drives in my Windows XP Home Edition PC, the first has all of
the OS and Apps, the second all of My Music and the third all of My Pictures.

With no drive letters assigned to the 2nd and 3rd drives, I've managed to
map the 2nd drive into the mount point of the My Music folder (after deleting
all the default MS content) and have done the same with the 3rd drive and the
My Pictures folder. As a result of this the My Music/My Pictures links on the
Start menu now show the drive icon (which is what I expected).

Both work perfectly, it means that I can now backup the PC to an external
drive by just backing up all of the C: drive (where the backup software
navigates the My Documents\My Music folder and finds all the music etc etc)..

Only problem is, everytime I reboot the PC the My Pictures folder is
recreated with a sample pictures folder and an Adobe folder. Going to the
disk management I see the 3rd hard disk has no mount point. I can delete the
content from the My Pictures folder and re-assign the mount point but it
keeps getting reverted everytime I reboot.

There are no problems with the My Music mount point.

Any ideas why the My Picture folder keeps reappearing and blowing away the
drive mount point???

 

[Andrew E.]

In diskmgmt,L.click on 2nd or 3rd hd,go to actions,all,click on "make
active",
then "change drive-letter/path",asign a letter.

 

[charlie_le_chat]

Thankyou Andrew, but I'm a little confused (excuse my ignorance)...

Not sure what activating the partition is going to do, surely its already
active if I can access the files on this disk (the 3rd one) when its been
mounted into the ...\My Documents\My Pictures folder?

Also, as to assigning a drive letter to it, this is exactly what I want to
avoid doing. I want the machine to 'appear' like it has one huge C: drive
including the ..\My Documents tree structure whereas in truth the ..\My Music
and ..\My Pictures trees are contained on other disk drives. This gives me
two/three benefits:
1. I can backup the C:\ drive as a whole rather than specify 3 drives -
which also makes restoring files easier to find.
2. My other half will be able to find Music and Pictures easily without
having to remember drive letters or following shortcuts.
3. In the event of a virus/bug/system fault I can reformat the C: drive,
reinstall and not lose any of My Music and My Pictures (obviously My
Documents will have to be restored but its nowhere near as big as the first
two).

Your suggestion doesn't explain why my approach is working perfectly for the
My Music folder but not for the My Pictures folder.

 

[charlie_le_chat]

Thankyou Andrew however your suggestions have not resolved the problem.

I couldn't 'make active' this partition as it was already active however
I've now assigned the P: drive letter to it as well as the 'My Pictures'
mount point.

Problem remains that from time to time, the My Pictures folder appears
empty. As far as I can tell this folder has been recreated by the OS (Win XP
Home) and the mount point has been removed from the drive (P: remains). I can
still see the pictures/files on the P: drive but I would prefer them to
remain within the My Documents/My Pictures tree.

I can go back into DiskMgmt and re-assign the mount point to repair the
situation but I've no idea why the OS keeps removing it.

I've got the same configuration for the My Music folder however I've had no
problems with this one and didn't need to assign a drive letter for that disk.

Could this have anything to do with the My Pictures entry in the registry
under HKCU\....\User Shell Folders???