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Currently I am making virtual drives using SUBST. 

subst T: D:\test

Now I want to hide my D drive. How to remove a drive letter? And then how can I make a virtual drive referring to a drive that doesn't have a drive letter? what would be the path to a drive without drive letter? following is like something I expect, if it exists:

subst T: \\DISK1\VOLUME0\test
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  • What is your goal here? What is the end result you are looking to achieve? More information will help you get the answer that best meets your needs. Please explain what you want to achieve & I will update my answer to provide it in a simple way.
    – yosh m
    Commented Apr 17, 2014 at 13:44

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You cannot assign a driveletter with subst unless it already has a driveletter.

If you want to assign a drive to a portion of an existing driveletter, you can do so from Computer Management.

  1. Go to Start
  2. Click Control Panel
  3. Go to Administrative tools
  4. Go to Computer Management
  5. Go to ComputerManagement (Local)->Storage->Disk Management
  6. Choose the partition that you want to be accessible
  7. Right click the bar and choose Change Drive Letter and Paths
  8. Click Add...
  9. Click the Browse... button and navigate to a path, create new folder and then OK to create a virtual path to this volume. For example: Volume1 points to: c:\other_hdd
  10. Press OK

If you now remove the driveletter to this volume, you can still access the content of the HDD through the path you created in step 9, for example: C:\other_hdd.

You can now use Subst to link a driveletter to a subfolder on that volume, for example:

subst e: c:\other_hdd\myfolder

Of course, it does mean that using c:\other_hdd your old harddisk is still accessible, and there's no way to prevent that. If you really want to make that place not being accessed, consider security by obscurity and hide the link somewhere deep inside a nested subdirectory tree where people are likely not to look.

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Hiding a drive - A handy tool to do that under Windows is the open source NoDrives Manager. You simply select the drives you want to hide & it updates the registry to hide them:

enter image description here

You can see an explanation of the nitty-gritty registry changes here if it interests you. (In short, it's a registry key named NoDrives located at HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\Explorer, where every bit in a 32-bit value represents a hidden drive from Z down to A)

There are other tools available, too, including Disk Management built into Windows (right-click the drive -> Change drive letter and paths... -> Remove), and Drive Manager (right-click -> Hide Selected Drive).

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  • You do not seem to understand the question, or you lack the knowledge to make a proper assumption. He wants to link a letter to a directory that has no driveletter, which, in windows is not possible.
    – LPChip
    Commented Apr 17, 2014 at 9:23
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    @LPChip - that's a rather remarkable assumption on your part about my understanding and the OP's question. I did ask him for some clarifications, which we are still awaiting. As for your apparent downvote on my answer - do you think the information about drive hiding was similarly flawed? In any case, until the OP clarifies what his question is - it seems premature to downvote any answer. Let's exercise some patience. If my answer is wrong, I will gladly update it accordingly.
    – yosh m
    Commented Apr 17, 2014 at 13:09
  • LPChip is right, this is totally something else. i dont want to share folders. this pc is on network and sharing a folder could create security issue. moreover sharefolder sometimes is offline when you restart pc.
    – Adeem
    Commented Apr 22, 2014 at 6:46
  • @Adeem - OK - let's see if I understand correctly: you want to give a virtual drive letter to a path on your computer and you don't want the "ordinary" path to be visible on the computer - correct? Do you require the regular drive letter to be "invisible" or to be completely inaccessible? In other words, is it sufficient that the drive not be visible (e.g., when looking at "My Computer" it doesn't appear)? If so, the simple solution is to use SUBST as you describe ("SUBST T: D:\test") and then run a tool like the one I mention to Hide "D:". (I'll update my answer to remove the network stuff.)
    – yosh m
    Commented Apr 22, 2014 at 12:00

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