Can I hide a drive from Windows Explorer while still allowing a drive to sync

[allen.keele]

Hi,

I just started using FFS to mirror files to a local drive target E:\ (1-way). I learned very quickly that it is easy to accidentally open a file to work on in my local drive target E:\, only to quickly lose my progress at the next RealSync event ;-).

I want to hide the target drive from view so I don't accidentally do this again, but still allow FFS to send files to it. Unfortunately, I learned that removing the drive letter in Disk Manager prevents FFS from working properly. Is it possible to sync to a target using the disk and volume identifiers instead of a drive letter?

[dennisb]

Yes you can. See the help file section about "Variable Drive Letters".
https://freefilesync.org/manual.php?topic=variable-drive-letters

[xCSxXenon]

I don't think that suggestion is going to work. That feature simply finds the matching name and replaces it with the drive letter, which won't exist. You could mount the "E:" drive as a folder at the root of your C: drive. Then it won't show up as a drive in File Explorer. It would show up as
"C:\TargetMountPoint\"
for example

[Plerry]

Or, probably even much safer, run your FFS sync under different user credentials (e.g. BackupUser) than your normal user (e.g. StandardUser), and provide only BackupUser with access (or at least write access) to E:\

[allen.keele]

Yes you can. See the help file section about "Variable Drive Letters".
https://freefilesync.org/manual.php?topic=variable-drive-letters

THANKS! This worked beautifully. It turns out the volume ID pre-propagates if you simply click the down arrow on the drives. However, I learned that I had to hide the drive prior to configuration, or the comparison seemed to want to use the drive letter if one was associated with the volume.

Note that you also need to be sure to pull the saved FFS batch file into the RealSync configuration to capture the volume mounts to monitor, else RealSync won't be able to monitor changes properly via drive letters and fire the FFS batch file.

I'm happy to report that I now have a volume from a new NVME drive mirroring one-way to a hidden SSD. If I ever need to get the data from the hidden SSD, I simply use MS Disk Manager to assign a letter, and then access through file explorer as usual. SWEET! Now I have a real-time copy of my critical data that is protected from my idiot self, and I won't accidentally lose work by editing a PPT file from my synced backup.

[dennisb]

You're welcome.

What you are doing is similar to my backup procedure. I also have a backup drive that does not have a drive letter assigned. I use a batch file to run my backup and use the mountvol command to mount the backup drive to a folder prior to running my backup task then dismount after.

I've also suffered from fumble fingers and deleted my backups so this "hide the drive" method works great.

[xCSxXenon]

Interesting to see that 'variable drive letters' works even without a drive letter lol
That's nice!