Windows – How to Mount and Unmount Hard Drives the Unix Way

external hard drivemountwindowswindows 7

On my work computer I have two USB hard drives that I use rarely. They have a power save mode that sends them into sleep after a couple of minutes of them being idle.

Whenever I open a context menu on a file, the drives are woken up (most likely caused by the "send to" handler).
So I eject the drive, but I can't find a way to get it back, other than unplugging and replugging it in.

Is there a way to unmount the drives, and then remount them only when I actually need them? (On Windows 7 Ultimate.)

Best Answer

Remove the drive letters using mountvol or diskmgmt.msc. Without a drive letter, they won't appear under Computer or Send To.

mountvol Q: /p

Using /p will actually dismount the device. On older Windows versions, you only have /d, which only unassigns the drive letter, but keeps the volume mounted.

Reassign when needed, using the volume ID printed by mountvol:

mountvol Q: \\?\Volume{1be3da43-6602-11e0-b9e6-f11e1c50f5b5}\

You can also mount the volume on an empty folder (Unix style) using the same tools:

mkdir C:\fs\backup-disk
mountvol C:\fs\backup-disk \\?\Volume{1be3da43-6602-11e0-b9e6-f11e1c50f5b5}\

All these operations require Administrator privileges.

(In fact, you might even be able to directly use the volume ID in your backup scripts, without having to mount it anywhere. For example, \\?\Volume{1be3da43-6602-11e0-b9e6-f11e1c50f5b5}\projects instead of Q:\projects.)

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