Map external drive to local folder
As mentioned before, I bought new desktop - and with new computer, there comes usually new challenges.
My new PC have built-in card reader - but as you know, if you have card reader with NO media inside, it will still occupy your drive letters and this can be quite confusing. Specially because I am using external USB drive and I am used that it is mapped to drive E: on my laptop - on desktop it is drive J:
So I decided to use some less known functionality of Windows - to map disks to local folders instead of drive letters. To achieve that, you have to follow these steps:
1.) Create some local folders - I created C:\Links (which is my storage of symlinks shortcuts) and there I created folder ExternalHDD
2.) Right click on Computer and select Manage
3.) Select Disk Management
4.) Right click on selected disk, select Change Drive Letters and Paths
5.) Remove current drive letter:
6.) Click on Add. Instead of specifying new drive letter select "Mount in the following empty NTFS folder" and specify folder you created in step 1:
7.) Click OK
Now you can check that your external HDD is no longer available through drive letter, but it is instead mapped to your local drive :)
I also created C:\Links\CardReaders - and I am mapping all my (empty) card readers as folders (so SD will be SD, MMC will be MMC etc...) to better organize my stuff:
So here is after all my final picture from Computer:
I really like to use symlinks to organize my data and to make them easily accessible. Microsoft is also using symlinks - and this is one of examples where you can run into hidden implementation of symlinks.
UPDATE: Forgot to mention - it is NOT Windows Vista specific feature, it definitely works on Windows XP and probably on Windows 2000 (I am using this feature for looooooong time)