Virtual Drive Creator™
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TechTV
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What does Virtual Drive Creator™ do?
The DOS SUBST command is a very powerful tool, even in Windows. It allows you to use a single (available) drive letter to specify a path which could be any number of folders deep, e.g. "c:\folder1\folder2\folder 3....\foldern" (it's been tested to 10 levels). Virtual Drive Creator™ (VDC) does exactly the same thing.
At this time VDC is not compatible with Windows Vista.
Creating and Removing a Virtual Drive
Select a letter in the “Available Virtual Drive Letters” list. You can use the cursor keys to select your letter or Click the letter with your left mouse button. You can then type in the path in the “Full path:” text box or, using the Drive and Folder Lists, browse to the folder you want set to the selected Virtual Drive letter. Click the
“Add Virtual Drive” button to set the virtual drive for this session. Click the
“Make Permanent” button to make the virtual drive permanent. Or, Click the
Cancel button to abort the operation.
You can also input the full path first, then Double Click on the letter. This will create your virtual drive while bypassing the “Add Virtual Drive” button. Be sure to input the full path before Double Clicking the letter!
To remove a virtual drive, select the letter of the virtual drive you want to remove in the “Used Drive Letters” list. As with creating a virtual drive, you may use a combination of your left mouse button and the cursor keys to select the letter of the virtual drive you want removed. Then Click on the “Remove Virtual Drive” button. You can also Double Click the letter to remove its’ virtual drive.
Notes:
Drive letters in upper case (A:) are fixed (hard) drives, removable drives with or without media in their respective drive bays or drives that have been "Virtualized".
The drive letters in lower case (b:) are Network drives, not available to VDC.
Virtual drives are discarded when you reboot your computer, unless they have been made permanent.
Why use VDC?
Suppose you are working on a project like the RPN Engineering Calculator™, and all your files are in a Folder named "C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio\VB98\RPN Calc", to access your files in Explorer, or VB6 you need to traverse through the maze of folders to get there. Using VDC I chose the letter R to represent that particular path and in any explorer type directory tree the letter R is there showing me all of my Folders and files I have in that Virtual Drive. I can also access that directory from a DOS Window.
Special for
CD-ROM users!
This works great! Copy the contents of your CD to a folder on you hard drive,
not the root.
Create a virtual drive pointing to that folder. Install the CD using the
virtual drive letter. And like magic you can run the CD from your hard drive.
This work for about 70% of the CDs we've tested, it does not work for music CDs
or Data CDs.
What does it cost?
Virtual Drive Creator™ (basic) is free. Virtual Drive Creator™ - Pro sells for $14.95. They only difference between the basic and Pro versions is the Pro version will offer the option to make the virtual drive permanent and the basic version will test your system to see if it is capable of performing the required instruction to make the virtual drive permanent.
What
this all means is when you download and use VDC there will be no time limit, nor
will you be nagged to purchase the Pro version (the "Buy Now" buttons
are not nags, they are there for your convenience).
What's New?
Version 2.1.4
Added HTML Help file.
Version 2.1.3
Revised Tab indexing to allow 100% use of the keyboard.
Covered using the keyboard in the Help file.
Version 2.1.2
Added warning that a root directory was selected.
Added a special note to the Help file to clarify what VDC is actually doing.
Version 2.1.1
Added tooltip to the "Used Drive Letters" list.
Corrected minor error.
Version 2.1.0
Changed the "Virtual Drive Letters in Use" list to "Used Drive Letters" list.
Identified drives in the "Used Drive Letters" list. The list identifies drives as:
Network drives are identified as lower case (a:).
All other drive types are in upper case (A:), including drives that have been "Virtualized".
Increased the size of the VDC interface to accommodate the reading/writing of longer paths.
Moved "Enter Registration Code" from the Help menu to the menu row.
Version 2.0.2: Added an "Enter Registration Code" to the Help menu.
Version 2.0.1: Corrected a minor bug involving the number of
total drives. Now supports 26 total drives, was 22.
How to get VDC
Download vdcx.exe or vdc.zip and run it to install the program, vdcx.exe is a self extracting zip file.
A note about the download file: Since most computers have all of the required Microsoft® files already installed we have eliminated them from our standard download file to reduce it to less than 35 percent of the original size. If you find that after installing VDC there are some missing files, download the full package.
To download the full package (less than 2 megabytes) download it here: vdcx-max.exe or vdc-max.zip.
How to Register VDC-Pro
Version 2.1.0 or greater: Click the Enter Registration Code menu item, then enter your registration number in the space provided.
If your version is lower than 2.1 then we
recommend downloaded the latest version before applying the
registration. The newer version will overwrite the older one.
We hope you enjoy using this program, if you do please
give the RPN Engineering Calculator™ a test
drive, it's free for thirty days!
Comments and
suggestions are encouraged
Some of the Virtual Drive Creator™ Awards
Last updated 04/30/2008