Windows drive (WinDrive)

TagBites.IO.WinDrive mounts any DirectoryLink - local, FTP, ZIP, virtual, or any other TagBites.IO file system - as a real Windows drive letter, backed by Dokan. This lets ordinary Windows applications (Explorer, Office, …) work with the directory as if it were a regular disk.

Requires the Dokan driver to be installed on the target machine, and targets net6.0-windows.

Usage

var directory = FileSystem.Local.GetDirectory("D:/Files");

using var drive = new WinDrive(directory)
{
    Name = "My Drive",
    IsReadOnly = false,
    IsSingleThread = false,
    IsNetworkDrive = false
};

drive.Mount();
// ... drive is now available, e.g. as "V:\"
drive.Dismount();

Options

Member	Description
Name	Drive label shown in Windows.
MountPoint	Drive letter (e.g. "V:\\") or an NTFS folder path to mount into. If not set, "V:\\" is used, falling back to the first free letter from Z down.
IsReadOnly	Mounts the drive with write protection.
IsSingleThread	Processes Dokan events on a single thread. Not recommended - can easily become a bottleneck.
IsNetworkDrive	Mounts as a network drive instead of a removable/fixed disk.
AccessDenyFiles	A WinDriveAccessDenyFileCollection of file/name patterns that should be hidden from the drive (e.g. Thumbs.db, desktop.ini). Use AddWindowsFiles() and AddCodeFiles() to add common presets (Windows shell files, .git, etc.).
AccessDenyProcesses	A WinDriveAccessDenyProcessCollection of process names that are denied access to the drive (e.g. to keep a syncing client like Dropbox from touching it).
IsMounted	Gets whether the drive is currently mounted; setting it calls Mount()/Dismount().

Combining with a virtual file system

Since WinDrive accepts any DirectoryLink, it can be combined with a virtual file system to expose several sources merged into one drive:

var directory1 = FileSystem.Local.GetDirectory("D:/TestFiles");
var directory2 = FileSystem.Local.GetDirectory("D:/OtherFiles");

var virtualDirectory = new VirtualDirectory
{
    Entries =
    {
        new VirtualDirectoryEntry(directory1, "a"),
        new VirtualDirectoryEntry(directory2, "b")
    }
};

using var drive = new WinDrive(virtualDirectory.ToDirectory()) { Name = "Merged Drive" };
drive.AccessDenyProcesses.Add("dropbox");
drive.AccessDenyFiles.AddWindowsFiles().AddCodeFiles();

drive.Mount();

Full implementation on github: TagBites.IO.WinDrive.