Assign a drive letter to a long path

Ever needed to have a driver letter like C:\ or D:\ (say drive Z:\) and when you click on it, it would take you to that really long path that you navigate to, for example (c:\Documents and Settings\You\My Documents\p2p\My Music\Rock\Metallica\First Cd\...).  Wow, that one long path.  Worry no more.  Thanks to the backward compatibility Windows offers to support legacy applications.  You've got two ways to do it:

  1. Using an already existing DOS command; or
  2. Using a third party tool that would remember your drives on start up (I like this tool).

For the sake of completion, I will talk about both.

  1. Windows 2000 SP4 and later versions of Windows have a command called SUBST.  You can map your chosen drive letter to your Metallica music collection like this:
    2. Note:  please start with letter Z if it's available and upwards as higher drive letters (i.e C:\, D:\, E:\ etc..) are either already been mapped or will cause you issues if you plug all these external plug & play gadgets like your USB stick.
      a) go to [start] - [Run] or use your keyboard and click on [Windows Key] - [R]
      b) Type cmd
      c) Type SUBST Z: "c:\Documents and Settings\You\My Documents\p2p\My Music\Rock\Metallica\"
      d) You should now have an extra drive in your explorer and if you click on it, you will be taken to the Metallica folder.

      Here is the catch though, the drive you just created will be gone the next time your reboot your computer.  You can overcome that using various ways but remember what BrilliantCode is all about, simplicity.  If you want to see how to do it, see this link.  If you don't and you think its complicated, then go for number 2 (smart decision).

  2. It's called VSubst.  VSubst has a very easy to use interface and I would seriously go to the author's website rather than duplicate pages over here.
    3.  
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