Mount hard drive as a folder

 When adding a new hard disk or create a new partition in Microsoft Windows operating system, typically users will normally assign a drive letter such as Local Disk (E:) to the new partition or volume. Beside normal way of allocating a drive letter, it’s also possible to assign a folder or directory (on partitions formated as NTFS) to represent the hard disk drive, partition or volume too, eliminating eliminating the use of drive letter and enabling browsing the volume and partition contents as in folder, or path.

Mounting a partition or drive as a folder also provides a workaround way or trick to allow a partition to appear as part of C:\ root system drive. This hack is particular useful to expand the hard disk space size of C:\ or other system drive without having to use a new disk drive letter or switching drive to accommodate older program or application that must store and save data on installed drive, typically at system drive.

To mount partition or volume as a folder, users must first have or create a empty folder on a NTFS formatted file system that users want to assign or associate with the partition or volume. And it’s also possible to mount a partition, a volume or a hard disk drive which already assigned with a disk drive letter as folder too, allowing two ways to access the volume or partition via different drive or different folder. And it’s not necessary that only a hard disk (which whole hard disk been allocated as single partition) can be mounted as an empty NTFS folder, unused partition or empty space on existing disk can be mounted as NTFS folder too as long as users can create a new partition on it.

Here's How:

1. Create a new folder in 'Drive C' with an appropriate name.

2. Right click on Computer on Desktop or Start-Menu and click on Manage.




3. Click on Disk Management in the left hand pane.




4. Right click on the drive you wish to mount in the middle pane, and click on Change Drive Letter and Paths...

5. In the dialog that pops up click on the add... button.

6. In the new window that pops up click on Browse...


7. In this new dialog navigate to the new folder you created earlier.

8. Click on OK on all of the windows that opened during this tutorial.

This is how my drive space looked before...

This is how my drives free space looks now after installing Test Drive Unlimited which is 6Gb big to the location C:\ProgramsEXT\TDU.