Create a Virtual Dropbox Folder Drive in Windows

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A quick tip for all dropbox users. If you’d like to treat your Dropbox folder as a drive, and add it to My Computer, you can do so with the SUBST command.

Steps:

Open Command Prompt (Press “Win + R” and type cmd) and run the following command:

subst X: "C:\Users\[username]\Documents\My Dropbox"

That will create a new virtual drive “X” with the contents of your Dropbox folder. Replace “X:” with the drive letter you want and enter the actual path to your Dropbox folder within ” “(double quotes).

This virtual drive will exist as long as you stay logged in Windows. Once you reboot, this setting is lost. To automatically create this drive each time you logon in Windows, we can run a simple BAT file at startup.

To do so, open a text editor (notepad would do) and type in the following statments:

subst /d X:
subst X: "C:\Users\[username]\Documents\My Dropbox"

Save the file on your desktop as .bat file. Again, remember to replace drive letter and Dropbox folder path with the actual path on your computer.

Next open the Startup folder (Press “Win + R” and type Shell:Startup) and move the earlier created BAT file here.

That’s all. Now when you boot up, Drive X: (or the one you entered) is automatically created and will refer to your Dropbox folder.

This is not a new tip by any means, but it certainly makes working with Dropbox easier. You can use SUBST command to create other such virtual drives from folder and it’s very convenient if you create too many tiers in your folder hierarchy.

This tip works on all Windows versions.

If you don’t have a Dropbox account, sign up here and get free 250MB storage space.