Looking for: "FAKE DISK" software.

[Jim]

Does anyone know of any freeware that will 'fake' a hard drive ?

For example; if I remove the second hard drive and cause partition D:
to vanish, Windows would not run programs on partitions other than C:
since the drive letters would have changed.

I don't want software to move programs to new drives, and I don't need
a working ramdisk or virtual drive. Just something to use up a drive
letter (or two) after C: while I work on the computer.

If the fake disk program could return a "disk full" error message if
software should try to use the fake disk, that would be perfect.

TIA
Jim

 

[Andy Boze]

Does anyone know of any freeware that will 'fake' a hard drive ?

For example; if I remove the second hard drive and cause partition D:
to vanish, Windows would not run programs on partitions other than C:
since the drive letters would have changed.

Perhaps you could do something like this. I'm using Windows XP with
NTFS, BTW.

1) Use the Disk Management snap-in from the Computer Management Console
to remove the D: drive. All this does is remove the drive letter from use.

2) Use the subst command to make a new D: drive. For example

subst D: C:\temp

would map a D: drive to the temp folder on C:

3) If you didn't want software to be able to use the new D: drive, just
make it read-only.

4) Later on, when you want to put the hard drive back in service, delete
the subst'd drive (subst D: /d) and then use the Disk Management snap-in
to name the drive to D:.

Andy........................

 

[James]

Does anyone know of any freeware that will 'fake' a hard drive ?

For example; if I remove the second hard drive and cause partition D:
to vanish, Windows would not run programs on partitions other than C:
since the drive letters would have changed.

I don't want software to move programs to new drives, and I don't need
a working ramdisk or virtual drive. Just something to use up a drive
letter (or two) after C: while I work on the computer.

If the fake disk program could return a "disk full" error message if
software should try to use the fake disk, that would be perfect.

Maybe try a ramdisk to create a temporary drive? You can probably find
lots of them if you Google. This site has a free ramdisk driver which will
create a temporary drive up to 64MB in size:
http://users.compaqnet.be/cn021945/RAMDisk/RAMDisk.htm

 

[BillR]

Does anyone know of any freeware that will 'fake' a hard drive ?

For example; if I remove the second hard drive and cause partition D:
to vanish, Windows would not run programs on partitions other than C:
since the drive letters would have changed.

I don't want software to move programs to new drives, and I don't need
a working ramdisk or virtual drive. Just something to use up a drive
letter (or two) after C: while I work on the computer.

If the fake disk program could return a "disk full" error message if
software should try to use the fake disk, that would be perfect.

TIA
Jim

Does anyone know of any freeware that will 'fake' a hard drive ?

For example; if I remove the second hard drive and cause partition D:
to vanish, Windows would not run programs on partitions other than C:
since the drive letters would have changed.

I don't want software to move programs to new drives, and I don't need
a working ramdisk or virtual drive. Just something to use up a drive
letter (or two) after C: while I work on the computer.

If the fake disk program could return a "disk full" error message if
software should try to use the fake disk, that would be perfect.

You didn't say which OS.
How many drives do you have and how are they configured?

The best suggestion - ask in the appropriate OS ng. This is more an
administrator/builder question.

Meanwhile, if only Drive1-C: and (optionally) Drive2-D: are bootable,
then create an extra very small partition on Drive1 (or as many as
needed). IIRC, that new partition will become D: next time you boot
without Drive2. Just be sure the core utilities you need are on C:
because the others will be unavailable for a brief time while you go
through the process of adding a partition (C-temp) & physically
removing Drive2 and later on when returning Drive2 to service and
removing C-temp.

Note, whether this approach will work depends upon how many disks you
have and how they are configured (number of partitions and whether
bootable). If Drive3, etc., was originally configured as bootable,
its first partition _will_ become D:.

If you have one partition per drive and four or more drives and last
drive doesn't have programs and both are bootable (or both
non-bootable), move your last disk to the physical position of drive
2.

(No guarantees. I haven't worried about drive order -- this
millenium!)

BillR