Windows 10: How to mount a volume on Win10 without drive letter or mount point

Hi guys,I use Macrium backup to back my entire system drive up and this works well. What I'd like to do though is back the drive up using the volume id eg \\?\Volume{8ea5fe40-0000-0000-0050-f64352000000}\.This works in Macrium if I set a drive letter for the drive and then remove it - it works for a while not actually checked but over a week I think but then the Macrium job fails and putting the volume ID into explorer fails.I know i can simply use Disk Management to add a drive letter then remove it straight away or mount on an empty folder but this is a faff and means the backup isn't fu

:)

 

How to view free space of a mounted volume in windows 10 ?

Hi Marvin,

• Running Windows 10 version 1709, Build 16299.125.
  • Have been running Win10 since the initial release, auto update is turned on
    
  • Previous versions until ~ April/May 2017 have worked fine.

• This is a home-built system, about 5 years old.
  • Intel i5-2500K CPU
    
  • Asrock Z77 Extreme 4 motherboard
    
  • Sapphire/AMD Radeon HD5750 graphics card
  • Multiple HDD's (Seagate, Samsung), all formatted at NTFS, all 2TB+
  • 5 HDD's are mounted this way, and the problem affects all of them.
• 
  Troubleshooting attempts:
  
  • Tried remounting in a new folder - no success
  • Assigned drive letter - Works fine
  • Assigned drive letter AND mounting to a folder simultaneously - Drive letter works, folder-mounted volume reports zero used/free space
    
  • Ran extended disk diagnostics (Seagate SeaTools, WD DataLifeguard) - No problems found
  • Hard Disk Sentinel Pro 3.60 reports 100% health on all volumes.
  • Tried mounting a new HDD - Windows reports zero Free space and zero Used space
  • Tried turning Disk Indexing on and off -- no effect
  • Have not tried Safe-Mode yet
  • Have not defragged because there have been no disk performance issues or errors ***EDIT*** Windows reports that all volumes are being optimized automatically (Frequency: Weekly). I did not realize this was enabled.
    
  • Have not done a clean install of Windows

 

does a mounted volume use disk space on the hard drive?

That's a great question. A mount point is just the path to a volume. If the volume is on your hard drive, it occupies space of the hard drive. But in the case of your Box mounted volume, the actual storage is on the internet and you have path to that volume (a mount point) in File Explorer. So, no, it doesn't occupy space on your hard drive.

 

Drive Mount & Hard Link bugs - Where can I report them?

There are a number of bugs in Drive Mounts that also involves Hard Links. I summarize them below. Where can I report the bugs?

STEP 1:

I added an External USB3 Hub with 4, connected USB3 drives to USB3 Port A.

I assigned Drive Letters & added Volume Labels (example: 'W:' & 'Movies1').

All was Joy.

STEP 2:

Later, using 'Disk Management' I changed the drive letters to Mount Points (example: 'D:\Movies1').

All was Joy except 'Drive Ejection' [see Note 1].

STEP 3:

I installed USB_Disk_Eject (3rd party app) to control ejection [see Note 1].

All was Joy (including ejection via USB_Disk_Eject).

STEP 4:

Later, I changed the names of the Mount Points & the Volume Labels of the 4 USB drives (example: 'Videos1' & 'D:\Videos1').

I immediately started having problems.

- USB_Disk_Eject no longer found the USB drives.

- 'Explorer' no longer saw the USB drives.

- 'Device Manager' had marked the USB drives as hidden.

- 'Disk Management' 'Change Drive Letter & Paths...' would not remove the Mount Points [see Note 2].

The USB3 drives worked when plugged into other USB3 Ports, but not USB3 Port A (even without the Hub).

The External USB3 Hub in USB3 Port A would be recognized and enabled, but not the USB3 drives plugged into the Hub.

STEP 5:

With the External USB3 Hub removed,

I was able to individually plug in the drives and revert back to using drive letters, and

I was able to delete the Hard Links that had been created as Mount Points.

What initially appeared to a fault with USB3 Port A &/ the External USB3 Hub is instead a fault with Windows.

Now I'm back to STEP 1.

[Note 1]:

The 4 USB3 drives are all the same make & model: WD easystore 25FA. As long as the drives had letters, 'Drive Ejection' could differentiate them

- 'Eject easystore 25FA - Movies1 (W'

- 'Eject easystore 25FA - Movies2 (X'

- 'Eject easystore 25FA - Movies3 (Y'

- 'Eject easystore 25FA - MoviesP (Z'

but when I switched to Mount Points, the 4 drives appeared in 'Drive Ejection' simply as

- 'Eject easystore 25FA'

- 'Eject easystore 25FA'

- 'Eject easystore 25FA'

- 'Eject easystore 25FA'

and I could no longer differentiate them.

On recommendation from 'answers.microsoft.com', I installed USB_Disk_Eject (which includes the Mount Points in its list).

[Note 2]:

As long as the 4 Hard Links existed, 'Disk Management' 'Change Drive Letter & Paths...' would not help fix the problems.