Chris Skorlinski Microsoft SQL Server Escalation Services
While assisting a customer with a SQL 2000 Replication configuration on Windows 2003 we need to reference the \ReplData folder as a Driver Letter. With help of Rick Rieser and Ryan Mangipano from Microsoft Windows Support team we had a simple elegant solution; Windows subst command.
-- Example below creates an alias V: drive to the c:\temp\repldata folder. C:\Temp>subst V: c:\temp\Repldata
-- We can now reference the folder like a drive letter C:\Temp>dir V: Volume in drive V has no label. Volume Serial Number is 206B-3D35
Directory of V:\
06/26/2011 09:08 PM <DIR> . 06/26/2011 09:08 PM <DIR> .. 2 Dir(s) 43,656,921,088 bytes free
-- When done we can remove alias drive letter reference -- Contents of the folder are not deleted, just Windows reference to the V: drive C:\Temp>subst V: /D
-- As expected, folder reference is removed and can no longer be displayed C:\Temp>dir V: The system cannot find the path specified.