Mounting external drive within existing folder hierarchy

[Guest]

I'm on Win XP Home SP2.

I am able to get as far as mounting my external USB drive in a particular
place in my folder hierarchy (using Admin Tools / Computer Management / Disk
Management). So I can then browser onto my external drive as if it were a
virtual folder on my main hierarchy. Great.

But when I try to do anything within that mounted folder, like copy a file
to create a duplicate, it doesn't allow me to... "cannot copy file.. being
used by another person".

However, when I browse directly to the external drive on E: then I *can*
perform the copy operation with no problems.

So, is there any way of making the "virtual mount" idea work as I hope, so
that I can "sneak" in some extra storage within an existing folder structure?

All help gratefully received.

Thanks,

Mike

 

[Pegasus \(MVP\)]

I'm on Win XP Home SP2.

I am able to get as far as mounting my external USB drive in a particular
place in my folder hierarchy (using Admin Tools / Computer Management / Disk
Management). So I can then browser onto my external drive as if it were a
virtual folder on my main hierarchy. Great.

But when I try to do anything within that mounted folder, like copy a file
to create a duplicate, it doesn't allow me to... "cannot copy file.. being
used by another person".

However, when I browse directly to the external drive on E: then I *can*
perform the copy operation with no problems.

So, is there any way of making the "virtual mount" idea work as I hope, so
that I can "sneak" in some extra storage within an existing folder structure?

All help gratefully received.

Thanks,

Mike

This is probably a permissions issue. I mounted my flash disk in
c:\USB, using this command:
mountvol c:\USB \\?\Volume{86456d61-e7c5-11db-aac9-006067726afd}\

and had no problem copying files to it.

 

[Guest]

Hi

Thanks for the reply.

I have no problem copying an external file onto the drive when in its
mounted position. The problem I have is copying a file already on the drive
back into the *same folder* on the drive. For example, Ctrl-C Ctrl-V would
normally place a copy of a file in the same folder. Or Ctrl-drag and drop in
the same folder would do the same. But when I do this on the drive in its
mounted folder, it complains with the error I gave before. But when I
navigate direct to E: and do the same copy operation on the same folder on
the same drive, no problems at all.

What gives?

Thanks,

Mike

 

[Pegasus \(MVP\)]

The first time I tried the Ctrl+C / Ctrl+V bit on my Win2000 PC
it locked up Windows solid. The second time it worked as expected.
Perhaps you have stumbled over a bug.

 

[Guest]

Do you have an XP machine to try it on?

And if this is a bug, how do I go about having the bug squashed?

I'm not too bothered about not being able to create copies like this, but I
think it is this sort of problem that is preventing me using the drive in its
mounted position for "real-life" purposes. Basically, I'm mounting the drive
in a particular place within My Pictures, to create a bit more space within
my existing structure, but I find that any pictures I put in the mounted
location cannot be properly processed and re-saved by the likes of Photoshop
and other image processing applications... perhaps they are trying to create
copies and are not able to do so.

I guess if this problem is unlikely to be resolved, I'll just have to admit
defeat and direct everything to E:\yyy\ instead of the neater ...\My
Pictures\xxx\yyy\ where xxx is the folder location I am mounting the E drive.

Thanks,

Mike

 

[Pegasus \(MVP\)]

No problem on my WinXP PC.

If you feel strongly about this issue and if you're convinced
that it is due to a Windows bug rather than something
peculiar on your PC then you can raise the issue by telephoning
Microsoft. They will charge you their standard support fee which
they will refund in case it's a Windows bug.

 

[Guest]

No problem on my WinXP PC.

Hmm. How irritating! (Not for you, for me!)

Any other idea as to why this would happen?

I'll try the MS support route as a last resort, but thanks for the info.

Mike