How To Mount a Drive as a Folder in Windows 11 & 10

Learn how to mount a drive as a folder in Windows 11 and 10 so that you can organize and access all your drives like regular folders.

It’s not common, but sometimes you may want to mount drives as folders. For example, I recently set up a system with several drives dedicated to media storage. To make things easier to manage, I mapped each drive to its own folder within a main root directory. This not only made it easy to access those files but also to organize them. Similarly, you can use this simple technique to isolate data in separate drives and access them from a single folder.

Whatever your specific reason is, Windows makes it easy to map any drive to a folder with just a few clicks in the Disk Management tool. In this quick and easy guide, I will show you the steps to mount a drive as a folder in Windows 11 and Windows 10. Let’s get started.

Good to know: How to mount a folder as a drive in Windows 11 & 10

Before You Start

• Create an empty folder on a different NTFS-formatted drive of your choice. If the drive is FAT32 or exFAT, the mount will fail. We’ll use this folder to mount your drive as a folder.
• Administrator rights are required to mount and unmount drives as folders.

Steps to Mount a Drive as a Folder

1. Right-click the “Windows” icon on the taskbar.
2. Select the “Disk Management” option.
3. Right-click the drive you want to mount as a folder.
4. Select the “Change drive letters and paths” option.
5. Click the “Add” button.
6. Select the “Mount in the following empty NTFS folder” option.
7. Click the “Browse” button.
8. Select the empty folder in another NTFS-formatted drive.
9. Click “OK“.
10. Click “OK” to mount the drive as a folder.

Detailed Steps (With Screenshots)

You can map any drive or partition to a folder using the Disk Management tool. So, to start off, right-click the “Windows” icon on the taskbar and select the “Disk Management” option.

Once it opens, right-click on the drive you want to map to a folder and select the “Change drive letters and paths” option.

The above action opens the drive letters dialog. Here, click the “Add” button to continue.

Here, select the “Mount in the following empty NTFS folder” option and then click the “Browse” button.

Now, browse and select the empty folder and click the “OK” button.

Note: Make sure that the folder you select is empty and saved in an NTFS drive. Follow these instructions to check the drive format.

Click the “OK” button in the main window.

That is all. With that, you’ve mounted the drive as a folder. If you open the File Explorer (Windows key + E) and navigate to the folder, you will see that Windows automatically changed the folder icon to a drive icon to make it easy to recognize. Opening the folder will display all the files and folders from the mapped drive.

Important note: After mapping, any changes you make to the mapped folder, such as deleting, updating, or creating files or folders, will be reflected in the original drive.

Unmount the Drive as a Folder

1. Right-click the “Windows” icon on the taskbar.
2. Select the “Disk Management” option.
3. Right-click the drive you want to mount as a folder.
4. Select the “Change drive letters and paths” option.
5. Select the folder mapping and click “Remove“.
6. Click the “OK” button.
7. With that, the drive is unmounted and unmapped from the folder.

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That is all. It is that simple to mount a drive as a folder in Windows 11 and Windows 10. If you have any questions or need help, comment below. I’ll be happy to assist.