Mount veracrypt volume to junction point folder in win7 or win8

[jedmeister]

As above, would like to mount a veracrypt volume to a junction point folder. Similar to what you can do in 'disk management'.

Any ideas? It was not practical under truecrypt , wondering if veracrypt supports this now or might in future?

[Testoslav]

Hi, sorry for hijacking this old thread, since this forum requires to send email to create topic, but the subject of OP perfectly matches.

In v 1.24 I there's a new (and great!) feature
* Add mount option that allows mounting a volume without attaching it to the specified drive letter.
So I wanted to test it. Behold, there is indeed a new option, but I find the need to select drive letter quite confusing. Is it really intended behaviour? So I used volume -> mount volume with options -> only create virtual device without mounting on selected drive letter.

Q1: So mountpoint has to be linked to available letter anyway?

Now, when I want to really mount the cointainer, I launched cmd as superuser, then run mount to list all the \?\Volume{Whatevers}\ and picked one which contains string NO MOUNT POINTS, copy and pasted to command *mount c:\temp \?\Volume{VC'sRandomString}*

Q2: It has to be really this complicated, or I'm just taking longer and worse road?

Q3: Is it possible to use this feature from command line? How?

Q4: Is it possible to determine \?\Volume{VC'sRandomString}\ in a batch file to pass it to mount command? I can Imagine to getting lost very soon, because I usually have like 6 mounted volumes and I need to assign them properly.

Q5: is it possible to add keyboard schorcuts to mount with volume options?
I press < A > for drive letter, < Alt+V > brings volume, now < M >< M > selects, < Enter >, but that's it :-( New feature lacks keyboard shortcut letter, so I need to use arrow down, but since the new option is not correctly added in order, I need to use < Tab > to skip all the options, OK, Cancel and there I am (oh my). I know, it is more of a feature reguest, but basic and repetitive tasks are much faster with shourtcuts (without redundant mouse clicks). Why? It's no problem to type 200 keys per minute, but it's very challenging to do that many aimed mouseclicks even with gaming practice ;-)

Thank you.

[Testoslav]

I will answer myself at least in point1: It seems, that in this mode letters are more like slots in linux, but they are not visible nor blocked for use, so letters used in VC can be used as network mapped letter etc. Perfect!

But, after reboot I'm unable to see veracrypt volume UIDs, if I don't mount them as letters first, dismount, mount without letter adn then using mountvol, which sucks. So I have no idea how to use this new and great feature :-(

When I right click on volume, theres Virtual device like \Device\VeraCryptVolumeE, but how do I mount that device I don't know, mountvol does not see them, mklik to that device does not work too :-(

Could you please provide some documentation? Thank you.

[Raccoon]

bump. There is still no documentation. This thread shows up in the top search results for "Only create virtual device without mounting on selected drive letter" as those words don't appear anywhere in the official documentation.

[RealTehreal]

When using the cited option, the volume is mounted, but without assigning a drive letter. So, it should theoretically show up in disk management tool as a partition without drive letter.

After googling for 5 seconds, I came up with this. As I'm not a Windows guy, I cannot be sure, this really works. You would have to try (or google) yourself.
https://www.watchingthenet.com/mount-partition-as-folder-in-windows.html

[Raccoon]

The quest isn't how to do it. It's how to do it in accordance with VeraCrypt's checkbox settings, bizarre virtual drive letter assignments, and with proper VeraCrypt certified documentation written and distributed by VeraCrypt. Nobody knows what these checkboxes do besides the author.

[Mounir IDRASSI]

Just to let you know that I'm currently implementing the possibility to mount a volume to a junction point folder. There are some internal challenges to implement this but I should be able to publish a beta version that supports this through command line in a week.
For the UI part, I'm not sure yet what is the best approach:

• Add a field in mount option that allows choosing the folder when to mount
• Allow adding new "slots" in VeraCrypt drives list where a slot is associated with a folder path. Then during mount, the user can select an empty slot to perform the mount.

I'm open to proposals for how to integrate this feature in the UI.
Thank you.

PS: For those who don't know, @adriankit had posted a batch script few years ago that helps mounting to a folder by using mountvol: https://sourceforge.net/p/veracrypt/discussion/features/thread/feb7d84efc/#f537

[Raccoon]

Thanks. As far as UI suggestions go, I would say it's time to retire the A-Z drive plane and instead display a list of mounted volumes only. Maybe include in the list the favorite volumes that are unmounted and mounted. Maybe include in the list the detected devices without partitions, and detected partitions without volumes, as potentially unmounted.

As far as behind the scenes, make all mounts driveletter-agnostic unless the user specifies an override, otherwise, allow Windows to assign drive letters.

Add a field in mount option that allows choosing the folder when to mount

Rather: Add a field that allows choosing a letter OR a folder, otherwise, let Windows handle it and just show the volume to Windows without asserting either letter nor path.

[Enigma2Illusion]

Hi @idrassi

After reading @racoon ideas above, I would like to propose a more simplified approach to mounting drive letters and junction point folders.

• The VeraCrypt drives list is changed to only show mounted drive letters and mounted junction point folders. This will require changing the mount process to selecting from a dropdown box the drive letter or junction point folder with the restriction that you can only select a drive letter or a junction point folder for a given mount volume.
  • Perhaps create the dropdown box below the box showing the selected file or device.
  • Hence, the user manually mounting a volume would click Select File or Select Device and make their selection.
  • Then in the "slot" below is the dropdown box for selecting a junction point folder followed by a listing of available drive letters. You could put wording at the top of list "Empty Junction Point Folder" with available drive letters listed after the wording in the dropdown box.
  • If the user selects the "Empty Junction Point Folder", then a new window opens to allow the user to select an empty folder in Windows with the code checking that the folder selected is empty at the time the user clicks OK for selecting that folder (not yet mounting).
• Regardless of the design changes to the UI on the main screen of VeraCrypt drives list, the Favorites screens will need to be modified to display either the drive letter or junction point folder for a given Favorite volume.
• The Auto-Mount Devices will continue to function as it works currently by selecting automatically the next available Windows drive letter since it is not feasible to know which empty directories are intended as mount points.

.
Given your possible desire to get 1.26 version released sooner due to the removal of the depreciated RIPEMD-160 and GOST89 algorithms and replacing them with BLAKE2s-256, these proposed changes may need to be implemented in 1.27 version due to the possible time consuming development and testing needed before releasing a beta.

[Mounir IDRASSI]

Thank you @agvulpine and @enigma2illusion for your ideas. We will need some prototyping iterations in order to achieve the best UX.

As Enigma2Illusion said, I plan to release 1.26 soon and so such big UI changes cannot be done for this version. That being said, I hope to be able to implement minimal command line support for this as an experimental feature in 1.26 for advanced users. This will help gather feedback and make junction point folder support production ready for version 1.27.