What Happened to the A: and B: Drives in Windows?

What's the deal with the A: and B: drives? Why doesn't Windows assign them as drive letters?
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Timestamps:
0:00 - Introducing the Common Questions
0:45 - The Reason For A: and B:
3:12 - What About Linux?
5:23 - What About Mac?
5:58 - Fun Fact: Mounting Drives as Paths in Windows
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#Windows #Computers #Tech #ThioJoe

[@MichaelSmith-on1ig]

As a musician I never questioned C being the root.

[@artemetra3262]

this made me exhale air through my nose, thank you

[@carstenschultz5]

good one

[@tommydplayskeys]

As a music teacher, everyone questions why C is the root. Music is full of stupid names :)

[@pussdesutroyer9481]

stop lol

[@KenjiUmino]

but doesn't the root change depending on the scale/tune you are playing in ? my music theory is a bit rusty ...

[@rewindd]

respect for him just answering the question up front instead of holding suspense through the whole video

[@fleursete]

bruh

[@rewindd]

@@fleursete h o w

[@rewindd]

@@fleursete again?

[@fleursete]

@@rewindd bruh wtf how

[@rewindd]

@@fleursete you are everywhere o-o

[@Keikyu-2100]

There is also an additional reason for reserved A and B. Compatibility again. Some very old applications will determine your drive type just by check the drive letter. Some old installer simply won't let you install on A or B because "they are floppy".

[@NotSomeJustinWithoutAMoustache]

This is the first point in the video iirc

[@lXlDarKSuoLlXl]

@@NotSomeJustinWithoutAMoustache its not, this is more of a tangent

[@TDXC------]

I use the Android File system alot, And now and then I download Windows Emulators. They read an A: Disk exists. And A: is resevered as infact. The Android \storage\emulated\0\ root. The A:\Android\data\ root can't be accessed as the directory needs special perms to be accessed.

[@Phlegethon]

Kinda crazy that A drive now needs to be explained

[@jamesslick4790]

As an old man who started on systems using CASSETTES, Yes, Yes it's crazy!

[@schwartzseymour357]

It's been at least 22 years. Time sure does fly.

[@fcsuper]

@@schwartzseymour357 22? 1991 (MS DOS 5 release year) is a bit longer ago than that. :).

[@schwartzseymour357]

@@fcsuper Well, Windows XP in 2001 was the first true Windows operating system that wasn't having a "dos-base", so I kinda from counted from then.

[@vahonenko]

@@schwartzseymour357 Wasn't it Windows NT 4.0?

[@weatherdynamics]

I love how the floppy drive still gets assigned to A even on Windows 10.

[@SanderEvers]

Only reason to plug in a floppy drive is for backward compatibility, so it's quite useful if a program on a floppy uses the drive letter a. Same reason why harddrives start on c:, because of the programs that aren't written correctly and hard code to start on C:\ and don't know how to use %programfiles%.

[@SmallSpoonBrigade]

Presumably that's because any software that you would reasonably use with a floppy disk is likely to assume that the floppy is A: or possibly B:, of which B: wouldn't exist unless there was a second disk and towards the middle of the floppy era was probably a 5.25" disk rather than a 3.5" one.

[@BlackSmokeDMax]

@@SanderEvers also use them for sneakernet on older CNC machines with no network capability.

[@bayareanewman1566]

@@BlackSmokeDMax man I haven’t heard the term “sneakernet” since I was studying networking using Novell Netware 3.1 way back in 1997!!

[@CarinoGamingStudio]

ahh the days of booting up on dos from a floppy disk. and how frustrating to install windows with a dos code.

[@teytreet7358]

When you already know the reason because you're old enough to use the A: drives.... :'(

[@partitionhlep]

i was born in the wrong generation

[@nobbynobbynoob]

Too right, I watched this video just to feel REALLY old! :)

[@balbhattfromthirdofsevenof7496]

@@nobbynobbynoob Reminds me of accidently leaving floppy drive and restarting and getting rebooting error because of that. When move command was introduced it was a breather :)

[@dash8brj]

I spent half a year using my C: as a storage drive before I finally realised I could "sys" the c: and copy DOS to it to make my computer boot much faster without using a floppy. I went C64>Amiga 500>286 PC with aftermarked 60MB hard drive. Of course now I have a gaming windows desktop, but my computer of choice is my M1 macbook :)

[@GeoNeilUK]

Back in my day, the floppy drives was DF0: and DF1:

[@electricerger]

Hi first time viewer here. 1) I very much appreciate your straightforward answer. You don't string us along for the content hours, you let the natural complexity and curiosity do that. Good work. 2) I'm glad you answered this. I've never really thought about that naming scheme (mostly just because I'm too concerned with what happens to the 27th drive you'd mount), but this really got me thinking.

[@thepolishtech1552]

Man id love to see what windows does when you add a 27th drive

[@stargazer7644]

@@thepolishtech1552 You can't use a drive letter for anything after Z:, you have to specify a path to mount it on. This actually can happen on enterprise database servers. We have one with over 100 drives mounted.

[@wumwum42]

The Linux file managers usually Mount drives to /media/ or /run/media/. /mnt is intended for drives manually mounted by the command line And the file managers also usually list mounted drives on the sidebar, so it shouldn't be confusing for the user because they don't have to know the path at all when using the GUI file manager !

[@radkovicbe]

I remember A and B drives, so I never even questioned this. But I’m in my 30s. As a teacher I had a student ask me this question, and I used this video to explain it much better than I could. Thank you for such a clear and succinct explanation.

[@Edood]

llll)

[@gligoradrian784]

Why is the main drive letter C? Because Windows was written in C. To pay respects.

[@hiru92]

linux , mac too

[@aradhaymathur]

Almost every system is

[@samuelhulme8347]

@@aradhaymathur some are c++ or just assembly

[@hiru92]

@@Gautam-tk8tf 🤣🤣🤣 what

[@triadwarfare]

And I thought F was the key to pay respects.

[@olandir]

Another reason to mount to folders instead of letters in windows is that every time you plug in the same device it will get assigned to the correct path instead of with drive letters where it's highly likely you could get a different letter depending on how many usb drives you have in at any given point

[@chrayez]

In high school I had (and in fact it’s still in my house somewhere) a flash drive with a full installation of StarCraft Brood War. I had set up 3 different shortcuts in the drive’s root directory depending on whether the flash drive was D:\, E:\, or F:\. I don’t know if windows 7 supported relative paths in shortcuts, but I definitely know my teenage self couldn’t find how.

[@Otto500206]

If you never take them off, they will always get the same letter.

[@Excubitor]

i dont know how i made it, but one usb drive that i use is always "m" so if you dont use like 10 Drives you dont get in to problems

[@ptravel]

Excellent video! I've been working with Microsoft DOS/Windows since the 1980s and I never knew about mounting drives using a path instead of a drive letter until I watched this. I've recently started working in Linux and your explanation of mount points, as well as the function of the mysterious mnt folder, is the clearest I've come across. Well done!

[@RonJohn63]

He didn't explain _why_ drives are "mounted". Think back to old movies from the 1960s where the main visual representation of "computer" is a big room with giant boxes that have spinning (reel to reel) tapes in tape drives. Well, those tapes had to be *physically MOUNTED* (usually by a human) and then *told the OS that there was a new tape.* Disk drives from the 1960s and 1970s were big and low capacity. Thus, manufacturers built removable "packs", where the platter and some mechanical bits were in a big plastic cylinder (with a handle). You *physically MOUNTED* the disk pack onto the big box with the drive motor and some electronics, and then *told the OS that there was a new drive.* The metaphor remains because the OS still assumes things work the same as they did 50 years ago: some drives are *mounted* when the system is booted, and others (like USB drives and still tape drives) can be mounted during normal system operation. The only difference now is that the system automatically detects when a new USB drive is inserted and (due to every thumb drive having a unique ID) that it's not the same as the thumb drive you had plugged in a moment before. This is also why you must *"Eject"* USB drives in Windows, Linux and Macintosh.

[@phizc]

@@RonJohn63 the main reason you need to eject external drives before removing them is that programs or Windows itself might have files open and not fully written. If the drive is removed before everything's been written you would lose data, and possibly corrupt the file system. Eject will check that everything's OK before letting you know you may disconnect the drive. It will also prevent programs from opening new files before you have the chance to remove it. In the properties for an external drive you can choose whether to optimize for performance or quick eject. When it's optimized for performance, Windows combine many small writes and later write a larger block of data. Flushing this to the drive won't take very long during eject, but it increases the chance of data loss if you just yank the drive.

[@RonJohn63]

@@phizc back in Ye Olde Days, the Operator had to run a DISMOUNT command on tape and disk drives to flush any buffers and tell the OS that the Operator was about to remove the drive. Windows Eject is no different.

[@Cetega]

The fact that this is even a question that needs answering makes me feel incredibly old.

[@Barten0071]

This question starterd in 2008... Dunno i first saw it in polish seriall long time ago

[@Pdor_figlio_di_Kmer]

I hear you.

[@Playingwith3D]

I am not sure how it happened, but the 80's and 90's were a long time ago now. It snuck up on me too. lol

[@morgfarm1]

FML I'm 29 and knew why A and B weren't assigned by default - Because A: was always the Floppy assignment - B was just seldom used unless you really really needed more than one floppy. But I also knew you could manually assign them. Most people today didn't know that. They also don't know D: is typically for optical drives -- Back when Optical drives were the norm and hard drives were still expensive enough to not bother with, but floppy drives had largely been discontinued or out of practice. I had a Windows 98 PC right up to 2011, still had a working A: Drive and the Hard drive was a massive, gargantuan, absolutely monumental ... 4GB. I built my gaming PC with an optical drive, but deleted it on the first refresh to have enough slots for my hard disks. Thank Goodness for M.2...

[@gligoradrian784]

You have more storage capacity than my entire informatics lab at school.

[@ThioJoe]

And i'm still running out

[@lsudo]

@@ThioJoe lmao

[@gligoradrian784]

@@ThioJoe I had a classmate who managed to ... rename his D: partition and turn into a TXT file...somehow. Out of a 256 SSD total space, you can imagine that 220 or so went down the digital toilet.

[@DarkGamerA]

Ya so tru... Why the hell does he need so much space

[@funnystoriesshorts481]

@@DarkGamerA video + edited footage

[@TheOPtmal]

A couple of corrections: 1. Modern Linux file managers usually don't show you the root folder, unless you specifically instruct them to. They usually just show you the attached drives in the sidebar like in Windows or Mac, and you're usually never manually mounting anything. 2. That is a very old version of Ubuntu. A better representation of modern Linux would be the latest version of Fedora, as Canonical (the developers of Ubuntu) have largely stopped caring about the desktop space, and even the latest versions of Ubuntu are complete dinosaurs.

[@ForOdinAndAsgard]

How do you propose to mount a secondary RAID array for data or media on Linux automatically in the installation process or later down the line? Data does not exist and neither does media. You will have to create and mount them manually using either the installer or a terminal. In the last case plz do not forget to update fstab either by echo or opening up fstab directly in a text editor and adding the needed line(s). How old any version is does not matter in this case as Linux acts exactly the same on this subject whether it is Gentoo, Arch, Fedora or Ubuntu.

[@anonyshinki]

@@ForOdinAndAsgard to be fair, not many users need to do that, and those who do are usually comfortable with running a few terminal commands.

[@ForOdinAndAsgard]

@@anonyshinki The point being that modern file managers cannot solve this as that was never a task of a file manager to begin with. It is the task of the partition manager and the mount system to add and remove partitions/mount points. The task of the file manager is to open up in the /home directory of the current user and it does except for root. Given that the home directory of the root user is /root as root when opening up a file manager it will default to / instead. Not that anybody in his right mind would be opening apps like a GUI file manager while being root but that is outside of the scope of this discussion. Rendering the whole OP his rant as useless for those (not so) many users who are still out there. This problem already arises for noobs who got their Linux initially running but now just want to add an extra hard disk once their system is up and running. That 'modern' file manager is not gonna help them in any way. The new disk will not even be recognized by the system. For me this all is a walk in the park but that is not the case for a noob. Better be clear from the start and help them as them going nuts and reverting back is not what we want. We do not intend to make it any easier though because that same noob can break his system if it were too easy in a single heartbeat.

[@JohnRunyon]

@@ForOdinAndAsgard the home directory of root is not /.

[@ForOdinAndAsgard]

@@JohnRunyon Yeah sorry saw the fail and corrected it. The home directory of the root is of course /root but his default working directory is /.

[@stephenlee5929]

Hi, I think the bit you missed on A: & B: was on older machines with only 1 Floppy drive, the same drive was normally given both A: & B: not just A:, so you could copy from A: to B:, with lots of swapping of discs.

[@buggergut]

You also could copy from A: to A: It would prompt to remove and insert new disk just as it did if you copied from A: to B: with only one physical drive

[@stephenlee5929]

@@buggergut Weird, I never tried that.

[@stargazer7644]

@@buggergut And how exactly would it know that one A: was supposed to be on one disk, and the other A: was supposed to be on the other disk? I think you're misremembering.

[@nzhook]

And that answers why it was A & B not just A. It's all todo with reservations for this type of legacy use, because there are (very old) apps that make the assumption that A and B are disks so MS have to allow them to continue even in 2022. What he didn't go into was for many years after floppy drives had disappeared many BIOSs also reported the existence of the floppy drive so they would still show up even if they didn't really exist.

[@vsevolodtokarev]

@@stargazer7644 It's for copying a file from one flopy disk to another using only one drive. You would type "copy a:file.ext b:", hit Enter, get prompt to insert disk a: ; Enter again, the OS reads some of the file into memory buffer, then prompts for disk b: ; swap the disks, Enter again, writes the buffer to that second disk; prompts to insert disk a: back; process continues. Yeah, those were the days.

[@isaacbailey3681]

I like how you answered the title question immediately, it made me actually *want* to keep watching for the additional info.

[@TheNinjaSlothy]

I remember when this was a troll channel, have come a long way

[@maze42d]

I still have PTSD from that

[@rbae]

What'd he do?

[@maxwellcrafter]

Its strange having actual information, I still often see videos and think that the title seems too far from satire and then I remember that it's not any more

[@SafirAksel]

@@rbae He usually makes "how to get [blank] for free" clickbait videos, like free Netflix or something. But he stopped

[@TechoNeko]

My young ass covered my old WiFi router in tin foil, never gonna forget that

One thing that makes some things very easy to use in Linux (and other unix) compared to windows is that the user directory is located in the same place (except if the sysadmin wants to do some flashy stuff) regardless of if the user directory is on the main drive, on a secondary drive or even on a network drive. Usually it is /home/username and the user does not need to know which of those setups it is, it works the same way regardless. While it may feel odd at first, it has a lot of benefits that makes life easier.

[@lemon3rd800]

If I recall correctly, on machines from the 2010's, the pre-set boot order still began with FDDs and was followed by HDDs afterwards.

[@hallowizer440]

"On Linux you have a root directory." Imagine an OS without a root directory.

[@spoopsfordays4311]

"Mac simplifies things by hiding the root directory." File managers exist on Linux, too. PCManFM is one of my favorites and it has what's basically the "This PC" screen. Just because I'm a sucker for the terminal doesn't mean that there aren't fantastic GUI options.

[@ExEBoss]

Except that Windows also technically has a root directory above all the drive letters, which starts with `\\.\` for device paths (e.g.: `\\.\Volume{b75e2c83-0000-0000-0000-602f00000000}\Windows\System32\`) and `\\?\` for UNC paths (e.g.: `\\?\C:\Windows\System32`), both of which can access paths longer than MAX_PATH (260 characters) and files with normally reserved names (e.g.: `\\?\C:\NUL\foo.txt`).

[@henkfinkers3931]

@@spoopsfordays4311 So much this. He looked at extra options and he thought: "Lol linux is weird. All this freedom. Why would you even need it?".

[@yosukerechain2000]

Same root. But have own language directory. Unix, linu, mac uses root. Windows to...root drive.

[@mittfh]

@@spoopsfordays4311 Most GUI file managers will show a "My Computer" view with root, home and any mounted drives not assigned to a system path. They'll also usually auto mount removable drives (usually to /run/media/username/drivename). Typically, /mnt only gets used for drives auto-mounted at boot (i.e. in /etc/fstab).

[@SDRIFTERAbdlmounaim]

no matter how many years pass *i can never take joe seriously* i mean... he's literally the guy that showed us how to *download more ram* 😂

[@yourbossdonpely]

word bro

[@PoeLemic]

Or, upgrade our xbox 360 into a xbox one.

[@muffinV136]

@@PoeLemic maybe a ps3 into a ps4

[@poelemic3642]

@@muffinV136 Well, yeah, he got me on a few things. Because I was a young kid and too dumb to know the difference. I did keep trying to make my 360 into xb1.

[@Vik1919]

That just means that you can't tell when someone is lying or not.

[@ericniewoehner3327]

Nice presentation. Using virtual filesystem mounts is a critical aspect of cloud server management. Cloud servers are usually leased with the C Drive being as minimal as possible, with programs and data off-loaded onto the Storage Area Network. So the mounts establish "folders" that point to the SAN. This is very efficient in Linux, but is a bit kinky in Windows because of the software development culture of Windows. You come across applications all the time that have hardcoded "C:\Program Files".

[@Sypaka]

Would be better to read the environment variable called %programfiles% and use that as a "default" path in a setup exe. Back in the days, I didn't have a C: drive, so everything hardcoded failed. Don't ask me how I managed to install Windows as E: . I had D: though, so C: was blank.. Wasn't hidden, even over cmd there was no C: accessible.

[@RonJohn63]

"You come across applications all the time that have hardcoded "C:\Program Files"." Still in 2022? I remember that back in the day, but Installers seem to have eliminated the problem. Haven't seen it in almost 20 years.

[@nispelsm]

@@RonJohn63 It's from software developers who take shortcuts to save on coding time, instead of using proper coding practices. They like to hard-code all their paths instead of using the predefined system variables and/or using the system registry to configure their installation and data paths. They may save a dozen hours by not having to create and configure an installation package, but the downside is that their software won't run on custom systems. I once had my boss try to tell me to use to fixed paths in order to save time on this one project... I proceeded to spend the next 15 minutes listing all the reasons why this would be bad. I was vindicated later when we found out our client was using a non-standard system setup, and if i had taken my boss's shortcut, the software would have crashed their system.

[@RonJohn63]

@@nispelsm of course it's from lazy developers. But "installer software exists", and the "directory chooser" dialog has been part of the Windows API for a long, long time.

[@nispelsm]

@@RonJohn63 You might be surprised how much pressure software developers are under these days to cut corners. Even with the existing APIs and installers, it can still take a few hours to configure and test an installation package. My last boss once gave me a month to get a project out the door, from inception to release. I had to drop all other projects for the month, and had to put in extra work on the weekends to finish. I was *so* tempted to take shortcuts to get it done sooner, but that isn't the kind of developer I am.

[@Adam-di6hl]

I think this is because the creators of UNIX OS thought about large mainframe computers where a large number of devices can be attached and therefore created a mount point system with a high level of abstraction. Such a system is very modular and flexible. While the creators of DOS were typically thinking about a personal computer that had only a few devices (usually one floppy and one hard drive) and that connected to a mainframe computer as a terminal. For simplicity for the user, the system of marking letters according to the alphabet is simpler and more understandable

[@stargazer7644]

DOS was not intended as a terminal for mainframes. We had dumb terminals and teletypewriters (ttys) for that. Now you know why terminals are called ttys in linux. The multiple drive letter concept in DOS came directly from how CP/M handled devices. DOS borrowed a lot of concepts from CP/M.

[@danielbishop1863]

Technically, UNIX was originally designed for "minicomputers" (especially DEC PDP and VAX), a class of computer systems that were smaller and cheaper than "mainframes", but similar in that they were multi-user systems. Point is, the typical UNIX user wouldn't care about whether /home, /usr, /bin etc. were on the same physical hard disk or not, because setting up and mounting the disks was the IT staff's responsibility.

[@DragoniteSpam]

Also as a fun fact, Windows also lets you do kind of the opposite of mounting drives to folders, in the form of creating "substitute" drives that are basically just shortcuts in the form of a letter drive. I've seen a few programs create a virtual "Z:" drive to get around potential issues with really long temporary path names and that kind of thing.

[@thisguy.-.]

As someone who has used the Celeste Ahorn map making tool, I much appreciate knowing why it does so :) (Also because it's coded in Julia)

[@mtpaley1]

In windows this is subst or net use. In unix/linux/mac (unix but it hides this) these are known as symbolic links.

[@dasy2k1]

@@mtpaley1 and some Linux distributions automount everything by disk UUID and then create a symlink with the drive label that points to the uuid mount point!

[@oldtupu45456]

C: is always more happy than D: Edit: OK, how the heck this comment got over 700 likes never Happened before Edit 2.0 : 875 Likes WTF Edit 3.0 : 1k 👀??? Edit 4.0: 1.2k ......

[@blautoon]

XD

[@maelstorm370]

Here before this comment goes popular

[@rabinshrestha10]

d:

[@daringcuteseal]

U:

[@klink_75]

xd

[@padcom]

A quick side note: nowadays it is the /media// for things like USB drives. And yeah, the comparison with C:\Mounted is spot on!

[@gameo7]

I had a feeling they were used for Floppy drives, but I didn’t know about mounting drives without the letters!! Thank you for all the helpful info and being quick to the point :)

[@mohammedkebab]

This is so weird.... I was literally just thinking “Why is there no a and b drive” then this gets uploaded

[@CreeperSlenderman]

Yes the same happened to me, in fact i think i had a deja vu about this and me now commenting this

[@Richard-bq3ni]

Me, 51 years old. That is because of the reserved letters for the floppies of course. How could this be a question?

[@trailersic]

OK Zoomer

[@Konkretertyp]

You must then be very young, i assume? Well at least you have had learned somthing.

[@trailersic]

@@Konkretertyp And learning is half the battle

[@borson9536]

When i was a kid i always thought MS-DOS icon is some game and i couldn't run it

[@Pettie95]

Clear, concise, exactly what I wanted to learn about and very well taught with lots of extra interesting info - subscribed!

[@JackOLanternBob]

I love how you go way more in depth than you need to, and go on so many rabbit trails to explain everything that I would also want to know. Stay awesome Thio

[@Tntdruid]

They are still there, you can change C to A 😉

[@chrismoule7242]

As per 2:41, I assume...

[@jensschroder8214]

Yes, you can change C to A and mess up your startdrive, than sitting for a black screen. I had Win98 on one partition and Win2000 on the second partition. Win98 was on letter C: and Windows2000 was running on letter D: It worked. But the Win2000 installation did it. I don't know how you can change the letter at the installation today. With Win7 and Win10 you get always letter C: for the running OS. If you boot in the other OS the letters always change, because it is Windows. With USB Drives the letters are always change.

[@SafirAksel]

Yes.. it's literally in the video

[@tomhaskett5161]

One reason to keep the A: drive on earlier systems was that you could boot from a recovery diskette in the A: drive if the hard drive had problems on starting. You had to create a diskette beforehand, and typically change the BIOS to point to A: iirc.

[@Helbore]

The normal thing was to have a boot order of A: B: C: and then never leave a floppy disk in during boot, unless you wanted to override the boot sector on the hard drive. As a gamer back in the early 90s, you often needed to use custom boot setups in order to free up enough conventional memory for the game to run. Memory management was weird in the old DOS days!

[@tomhaskett5161]

@@Helbore That's true, I had forgotten that

[@stargazer7644]

Systems with floppies generally booted from A: first if it was present.

[@biogfp9340]

I'm on Mac and although the file system is very similar to Linux, it has some differences. USB and other hard drives are stored on the /Volumes directory inside the root directory.

[@Crackhog]

On linux, they are stored in /mnt unless you specifically want them to be somewhere else

[@maug314]

There's also variations between distributions of linux. Fedora and Ubuntu generally automatically mount USB drives to /media/name-of-disk. Using this method, permissions can be granted on the directory to so that a non-root/unprivileged user can still mount a disk as themselves (ie without sudo), plus it can help keep things a little tidier.

[@mtpaley1]

It is the same principle though. Storage is mounted as a directory in the file system instead of a disconnected top level. The mount point itself is not important be it /mnt, /mount or /Volumes

[@dilianvt]

ThioJoe just answered my long awaited question on drive letters and paths with external drives I could give you a truck load of thank you’s but seriously though you just helped me out.

[@CarletoGamesCGYT674]

Well, some time ago my Windows XP was installed on D: drive, I don't know why.

[@FlyboyHelosim]

I had an XP install go somewhere other than C:, I believe it was because I installed from a USB stick and not an optical drive. The installation must have seen the USB stick as C: thinking it was the main hard drive, and listed the actual hard drive as an afterthought.

[@vincentschumann937]

i have a hard drive with like 50 partitions in my pc, so windows installed but the drive didnt mount because all drive letters were taken

[@FlyboyHelosim]

@@vincentschumann937 Bruh.

[@ashii_ii]

@@vincentschumann937 As Linus said in a video once: "ITS CALLED A FOLDER!!"

[@vincentschumann937]

@@ashii_ii yeah but it deasn't automount into folders

[@ThatOnionispog]

i love how these drives all look like faces

[@skelebro9999]

@Rahul Gupta C: D:

[@ananttiwari1337]

@@skelebro9999 :V

[@skelebro9999]

@@ananttiwari1337 no

[@skelebro9999]

I:

[@sethadkins546]

When I was little I always thought the drive letters was a little emoticon showing the health of the drive

[@PoeLemic]

Wow, ThioJoe's content has really improved. Used to be not that useable long-term, but, MAN, has he really improved this channel. Glad that he changed his focus.

[@hexagonal69]

This was really informative and easy to understand, thank you! Has anyone ever told you could be a teacher? Because I’m sure that if you did become one, your student would perform amazingly well, and you’d most likely be the most popular teacher at that school!

[@FlyboyHelosim]

More specifically, typically on old computers the A: drive was reserved for 3.5" floppy disks and the B: drive was reserved for 5.25" floppy disks. That way you could use two disks of two different sizes at once in the same computer. This was especially useful when the industry was transitioning from the 5.25" floppies to the newer 3.5" ones, where there was no hard drive present or a direct transfer was just preferred.

[@unitrader403]

i thought back then all computers had two drives for two reasons: A: Put your Program Floppy in one Drive, and your Documend/save Floppy in the other so you can work without constantly swapping them B: To allow easy copying of Files from one Floppy to another

[@LeopoldoGhielmetti]

It depended on the hardware you had. The first PC had one or two 5"25, so, A: and B:. Then the 3"5 arrived and the letters where assigned as usual, A: for the first drive and B: for the second one, which one was the 3"5 or the 5"25 depended on how the computer was configured, usually A: for the drive connected on the primary port and B: for the drive connected to the secondary port (the ports where equivalent and can be swapped at any time, just removing the flat cable and connecting it in another way). At the time I was also playing around the drive letters, putting the A: letter on the HDD and Z: for the floppy, and something like that. It was not straightforward in DOS, but possible. The problem is that it was mostly a curiosity because many programs at the time where simply not supporting it correctly. Then, in 1989 I've discovered Unix and VMS, then in 1994 Linux, and after that I've used almost exclusively Linux. At the end I've finished by considering the drives letters a strange legacy from the past and I still find it very annoying that modern Windows still uses drive letters.

[@queenannsrevenge100]

A: and B: weren’t reserved for specific floppy types, it was pretty much up to use convention, which is why some people assumed A: was typically 5.25”, and others assume it was for 3.5” . When I was just starting out with IBM PCs, A: were BOTH 5.25”… later it was yoivally 5.25 and 3.5,then still later 3.5 and 5.25, and toward the end of the Floppy era, both 3.5”, or just one A: drive and dropping a second floppy entirely.

[@FlyboyHelosim]

OK so why is my comment blowing up a year later?

[@okaro6595]

Not again. This simply is not true. Computers typically did not have two different types of floppies. The A: B: C: scheme was fixed in 1983. 3.5" floppies were introduced in 1986 with the IBM PC Portable.

[@sethadkins546]

Before watching: They're reserved for floppies

[@officiallyanthony]

I loved you getting to the point right away, very good

[@aminechu]

Amazing explanation! Thanks! Didn't even know I wanted to know about how the different OS mount drives :)

[@luisoncpp]

I use Linux regularly, and for the last years I have been taking for granted to have something similar to "My Computer", showing shortcuts to all the mounted drives (in the same way as Mac does).

[@kastiloshepherd1892]

Very late, but I usually just create a folder called /drive-mount/ and point all new drives to that location. Then I just pin it to the file manager, but I think Gnome3 and Ubuntu has that feature now.. i think been a while since I've used Ubuntu

[@gamermapper]

I haven't used Linux but android, also a Unix based system. The file system was and still is very confusing compared to Windows. I have two main drives, my internal memory and my sd card, both situated in /storage. That already makes in confusing, why is there a folder with two drives inside. Then there's all the other folders in / (the root folder) and I can't easily know in which drive they're situated. They're also my internal memory, aren't they? Are they on a different drive that my internal memory? Then places like /system show up that there's no space anymore, but then is /system it's own drive? I don't know. Is my internal memory partitioned into different drives and I haven't ever even known it?

[@duckonaroll1913]

@@gamermapper android isn’t just unix based, it’s another linux distro

[@salia2897]

@@gamermapper A single device like an sd-card can contain multiple partitions containing multiple file systems. Windows can do that two, you will then see multiple drive letters being assigned to just one device but different areas of that device. Android uses a setup like that, where certain amounts of space are allocated to different purposes. So stuff like /system and /data probably reside in the same physical flash memory but are separate file systems. One advantage for that is to have a guaranteed area of memory available to the system. Also, some of these directories could just be virtual or point to some other place. The android file system has been setup for technical reasons, not for usability. Android does not usually show that structure to the user. How these directories are mapped to storage also is up to the manufacturer of the device, I believe. So theoretically their could be more than one flash memory device in there.

[@mtpaley1]

You need to be careful here. Linux is the OS which has no concept of "My Computer" or "Home". These things come from a layer of application software that creates the user environment. Mint/Debian/Gentoo/Redhat/.... are all layers on top of the linux OS. In theory a windows GUI could be written (and some have tried) but this would hit legal problems when it starts to look too much like MS windows.

[@sammyplayz9584]

love you thiojoe!! YOU ALWAYS HELP ME AND MAKES MY DAY!! :D

[@marcianoacuerda]

Great explanation on this topic. I remember when I learned about file systems, in the end everything is just a visual representation of them.

[@queenannsrevenge100]

What’s so funny for me is that the answer is so obvious to me because I’m an old codger, that I keep forgetting that there’s a whole generation of people who’ve never even seen a floppy drive. 😃

[@user-ci9gy2do1z]

Which one? 3.5" or 5.25" ? 🙂

[@ledoynier3694]

@@user-ci9gy2do1z 8" :) it's amazing what we found at school, as late as the mid 90s :p

[@DanOCan]

It never occurred to me that this convention is so old that people wouldn't already know it. 😕

[@Pdor_figlio_di_Kmer]

Way to make one feel old.

[@morgfarm1]

I'm at the edge of that window. I'm 29, had a Windows 98 PC thru 2011, and I distinclty remember A: was always assigned to the floppy drive, so I always knew from then on what A was traditionally for. Not that it saw much use... But dammit it still ran. What's almost worse is nobody has picked up on D: traditionally having been assigned to Optical drives -- Back when those were cheap enough to use a lot of after Floppy was largely out of practice and extra hard drives were still not exactly cheap to add.

[@gdhpsk8723]

I’m literally only 14 I didn’t know A: and B: directories were even being used. I don’t know a lot about floppy drives I just know that they can store stuff like games and programs

[@zotaninoron3548]

We now live in a world where there are adults who've never actually seen the real life version of the save icon. As someone who has used windows computers since before 95, the comments to this video kind of blow my mind.

[@pozitroncz8679]

Recently I saw on Reddit somebody posting an image of IDE HDD, asking what it is and how it can be connected to a computer. I really felt old at that moment.

[@zotaninoron3548]

@@pozitroncz8679 Oof, yeah. I still had a box of ps/2 mice and keyboards laying around until just last month. I can only imagine if I told most folks that these day, they'd think I was talking about Playstation. A real, "We're closer to 2070 than 1970," kind of moment, there. Que instantly aging Matt Damon meme.

[@darrenwalker7343]

Great video. I grew up with A: and B: drives from '85 onwards so great to hear a bit of history again.

[@templare251993]

Even though I knew many of the things you explained in the video, I learned so many other things! Great video!

[@prashon10]

I never thought of this Thanks Bro😍😁

[@rxgtv]

It's C: to make Windows smile.

[@Lurker-dk8jk]

On a somewhat related note... When mapping network drives in Windows, it starts with the letter Z and works backwards by default. So you get network drive Z, then Y, then X, et cetera.

[@christoney2491]

I was unaware that you could mount drives in windows. That's a handy piece of information! Thank you! That earned a Subscribe.

[@JoseSanchez-xj3xn]

I have a much better understanding of how old I'm getting since I already knew the answer to this. Thanks Thiojoe!

[@techbio]

I used to dual boot several OSs on several drives including more than one copy of windows. So it's very common (or was in those days, dual booting isn't so common now) to have a windows path of D: or E:. The way the os handles it, and any well written software, is through variables. So for example the program files directory variable %programfiles% on a drive that uses d: as the windows drive, will be set to "d:\windows". A program that doesn't allow the user to change the install location will automatically be installed to %programfiles%. The developer will set the install folder as %programfiles%\thisprog, unless they are a really poor developer, they won't hardcode the drive letter into the path; they will use the system variables

[@Wolterhon]

A very good and in depth video, just how I like it. Props to you for making it

[@XDarkPhoenixxX]

Answered a question I didn't know I had, in under 10 minutes, explained it well and I actually paid attention. Liked and Subscribed.

[@pianopianist5709]

Everyone is 10th, including me

[@laz3664]

Lol you have 9 likes

[@himanshunayak4378]

deja vu

[@pianopianist5709]

Only early people will understand ;) @Nadja Krzyżańska

[@plcdfa]

The fact that there are adults out there who don't know this makes me feel so old.

[@nobbynobbynoob]

I got my first computer in 1982 and it didn't even have a floppy drive: programs had to be loaded on tape or cartridge which took... a while! :D She was blessed with 16K of RAM and cost a few bob back then - thanks Dad, bless yer soul.

[@grn1]

My mom is around 50 now and I'm sure she doesn't know this. I already knew because I'm a tech nerd.

[@Grumpy-Fallboy]

ThioJoe :D i learned something today. "about the mount folder stuff" i didn't knew before. thanks

[@sayaztv]

Thanks for this. I brought this topic up in my apprenticeship and the stuff mocked for that and didn't tell me why it is wrong.

[@LMFAOdudeification]

...what was confusing about the Linux one? Just like how we kinda just accepted Windows was set up the way it is, you concisely explained how most Linux distros are set up.

[@RudyBleeker]

Also it kinda annoys me that he's calling Linux the weird one here, because first of all the hierarchical filesystem method has been in use longer as it dates back to Multics (which came before Unix) and is used by more different operating systems like the already mentioned MacOS, Linux, Unix, Multics, HP-UX, Solaris and every other Unix-like OS out there. So it's actually DOS and Windows that are the weird ones, they just have a higher install base on desktops so that more people are used to them.

[@jm131719]

Video makes me think of Led Zep: "Yes there are two paths, but in the long rrun..." A: B: C: etc are still simpler than AmigaDos DF0: DF1: DH0: etc.

[@onlineamiga]

I dunno I really liked AmigaOS way of handling things. You had physical device assignments, like DF0: instead A: . But also volume labels, such as Music: so you the O.S could ask for the specific label. But then you could move that wherever you want and Assign Music: to wherever it now is giving you some amazing flexibility as to where you can put your stuff. including system files Wanna move system32 equivilent to another drive? Or put it somewhere else? .. no problem at all in AmigaOS :) Just update the assign point for LIBS: or DEVS: and viola.

[@xheralt]

It got even more complicated on PDP-11/LSI-11 or similar systems, before the IDE and SCSI standards existed. In the earliest days of the technology, _every_ brand of hard drive was proprietary, you had to buy both the hard drive and controller card together, typically designed for the S-100 bus. Each hard drive manufacturer had its own device identifier, I vaguely recall one something like "SMB:" under the AlphaMicro Operating System (AMOS).

[@HenryLoenwind]

@@onlineamiga The nice thing about that was that a program could ask the operating system for its stuff by name and the os would figure out where it was. Prompt the user to insert a floppy, use a folder on a hard drive or whatever. That's a nice way to make old software that was written for a stack of floppies compatible with hard drives instantly.

[@littlebit670]

For some reason in a lot of Linux distros, USB sticks take the directory of /media//. Also, in the MacOS Terminal, mounted devices can be found in /Volumes.

[@sakuyarules]

I knew about thte A and B floppy thing, but still found this an interesting video, and even learned a few things. Thank you!

[@James_Knott]

I had an XT clone back in the 80s, which had 2 floppy drives and no hard drive. Before that, I had an IMSAI 8080, where I used cassettes. I first used the mount command in VAX/VMS on VAX 11/780 computers, back in the 80s. BTW, DOS inherited drive letters from CP/M, which in turn got them from an IBM system. Incidentally, I still have a USB connected floppy drive, which came with a ThinkPad. However, I haven't used it in years.

[@bartek05303]

In Linux you can install SSD as \ (root) and HDD as \home. Now, apps will be installed on faster but smaller SSD and all your data will be stored on HDD.

[@stevanmiladinovic4007]

Linux DOES in fact assign drive-letters. "Block devices" (SATA disks, USBs) will always be found under /dev/sd starting with a for the first device found at boot-time and going up from there. Floppy drives will always be assigned to /dev/fd (number counting from 0) nvme-drives will be found under slightly more complicated paths like /dev/nvme0n1

[@E4S65]

Thank you for the quick answer. I appreciate not being strung along and I still watched the whole video till end

[@markusw9455]

I use this for extending the pathlength of Windows. There is a folder path I cant change, which already uses 150 signs. So I added a .bat file (in autostart) with subst Y to the given path. Then I have a valid Y Drive which I can use and run programs on the files. Maybe this helps anyone :) If you see possible problems please tell me. It is in fact a OneDrive Folder, but so far it works fine. I only cant access the Rightclick OneDrive options like share or similar

[@ramprasath219]

This will definitely be useful 😋, I wonder what will happen if we removed the drive letter and mounted the usb to some folder and plugged it in a another pc🤔

[@stevenlace7902]

Same thing that happens when you plug a USB drive into any other computer. Mounting to a folder is local to your computer and doesn't alter your drive. Plus, this isn't limited to USB drives. I use my A: and B: drive letters to map network drives.

[@Bigfuzzyify]

Great video. Very helpful. Thanks.

[@trevormcintosh5564]

Dang you just clarified lots for my storage needs, thankies!

[@spacelem]

I'm a 40 yo who remembers having 3.5" and 5.25" floppy drives. I've been using Linux for nearly 2 decades now, so having devices mounted to directories feels pretty natural. I'd pretty much forgotten about the A:, B:, C: drives etc., but it's nice to be reminded of that (and I remember the horrors of devices in DOS, no I don't miss dealing with it).

[@pa_3op]

Mainly a Windows user, but yeah, Windows approach seems natural mainly because of just habit, having unified root is way more logical. I may be biased being a programmer, but it's so smooth having everything as a file/directory =)

[@ug333]

Personally, the *nix system is far simpler. You have one filesystem to navigate, which I like. And the ability to do things like, mount a drive directly into my home directly, is amazing.

[@chickeninabox]

I think he did that because people, are scared of Linux, like how people are scared of text in a foreign language, like how the meme of the Arabic bag reading that this is only to scare people afraid of Arabic.

[@cperez1263]

Awesome video. Thanks for sharing this.

[@sebasns2444]

Thanks for that video I really love your explanation, thanks bro!

[@islazer1356]

dang 2 seconds early, just forgot to comment LOL

[@ThioJoe]

Close enough i forgive you

[@islazer1356]

@@ThioJoe thank you my tech lord :P

[@thiscoolguy4378]

@@ThioJoe i love ur videos could you plz notice this reply?

[@kerhabplays]

He would but he couldnt reply

[@thiscoolguy4378]

@@kerhabplays why not?

[@espiondev]

i used to think the main drive's letter changed depending on how full the drive was. i thought it meant a smiley face. same for the D: drive.

[@Malidictus]

Thanks for making me feel old. I didn't realise it's been long enough since floppy drives for people to forget what A: and B: drives were for :)

[@_Tzebra_]

The golden rule of Computers since the dawn of time, "If it ain't broke, don't try to fix it".

[@p05_]

Even if it is broken they don't fix it.

[@sosopwsi829Jjw9]

So that's why arabic countries are filled with shitty sharia law.

[@gamermapper]

Windows updates disagree :(

[@d0rban]

I’ll quickly mention than macOS mounts its volumes in /Volumes instead of /mnt or /media.

[@cameronwebster6866]

I just figured out a good use for the technique mentioned at 6:06: if you set up a drive with ventoy [Joe has a video on it}, you can shrink the partition for the ISOs, and add one for general use, you can the remove the drive letter and mount it to a folder called something like "ISOs" or "Ventoy" so that it acts as one single device.

[@darkprincess4679]

I have nothing to add, the video was really well put-together and explanatory. Linux and Unix filesystems are a whole different beast though so I encourage anyone who's interested to look more into it. From mounting, to snapshots, to file systems types, mixture of different file system types embedded as directories, device files, kernel device files, the list goes on. It can be very overwhelming but very interesting.

[@rafagd]

FYI, Linux DE's like Gnome and KDE also hide away the path details when you mount the USB drives. It's a bit buggy depending on distro but they do try...

[@mtpaley1]

But this is the GUI and not the OS which is actually the same with the mac.

[@NickCBax]

The windows solution strikes me as traditional Microsoft: preserve backward comparability at all costs. So your drive might be a drive in the normal spot... or it might be a drive in a completely weird spot.

[@llpBR]

I always watch your videos like "well, I already know that" and then you surprise me. Always.

[@aaravmahajan303]

Nice Explanation...🙌🙌🔥🔥❤️❤️

[@bobbeaman1]

A trivial note, but for the purpose of historical accuracy, it was about 2-3 years before hard drives we even available for the PC. My first IBM PC had one SS/SD 160k floppy. I remember to this day buying my first 10 MEG hard drive. It was almost $600. And I thought I'd never fill it up. And believe it or not, it was a long time before I ever did.

[@Llortnerof]

Imagine still having to use it now.

[@CurmudgeonExtraordinaire]

My first PC hard drive was an actual Seagate ST-506 -- 5M... The IBM PC's power supply did not supply enough wattage to power it, so I used and external 12V power supply and snaked a cable through the back of the PC to the drive... You had to start the external power supply first which would let the 5M drive start spinning up to speed (sounded like a little turbine winding up)... Then, when the sound was right, you could turn on the power to the computer... The PC had a 65W power supply and the XT had a 150W one...

[@ratbag359]

And the days of the BIOS was more than a boot loader aka the ROM which would contain your OS and allow you to load programs from your tape drive and floppy drives into RAM.

[@jdkap201]

4:54 - /mnt/ is NOT the default mount path in modern Linux distros, instead it's /media/ - in older distros the mount path might be in /mnt, but it is generally reserved as a chroot directory for install and maintanace. The typical behaviour of a pre kernel v4 distro would have been to assign an ascending device number starting with sda1 whereas "sd" means SCSI disk, "a" refers to the first physical hard disk (b second, c thrid, etc.) and "1" means the first partition on that disk (side note: IDE disks are named with "hd" instead of "sd"). The mount point would have been /mnt/sda1 or in later distros /media/sda1. Newer distros either create a mount point according to the disk's virtual label i.e. if I label a USB-Stick "Datastick" it would get mounted as /media/Datastick OR the mount point is created according to the disk's UUID i.e. /media/443a8471-17fa-4c04-8b50-e80080e6cc99 where the label "Datastick" would be displayed in the file explorer.

[@sovo1212]

I was about to comment something like this, but also I guess the biggest mistake in the video was to assume Linux is just a single monolithic OS like Windows. In my system, the mount path for hard drives (and external drives as well) is "/dev/", not "/mnt" nor "/media/". Also, both the kernel and multiple distros have evolved over the years and, as you said, now they can mount automatically any external drive for instance. In my case it is somewhat like Windows, I get the device visually mounted by its label name. Sidenote: I thought the "S" referred to SATA, not SCSI drives, however my USB stick is mounted as "/dev/sde/" (after "d", which is the latest hard drive). My NVME drive is mounted as "/dev/nvme0n1" and its partitions identified as "nvme0n1p1", -p2, -p3 and so on.

[@mtpaley1]

@@sovo1212 But the basic point is still valid. Drives can be mounted anywhere in the filesystem and they appear as a directory

[@dasy2k1]

And it varies significantly. I use /mnt/ for hard drive partitions that mounted on system boot via /etc/fstab I then use /media/ For stuff that is hotswappable and mounted by my normal user account

[@MrJef06]

@@sovo1212 /dev is for devices, not mount points. You would say for example: "block device /dev/sda1 is mounted as /media/my_drive".

[@TechSY730]

My personal rule of thumb is that permanent or explicitly specified mount points go in /mnt, while transient or automatic ones go to /media (which is already the default behavior). But yes, it's completely arbitrary. Neither the kernel nor (standards compliant) program coded cares.

[@ailurophile4341]

Love this video bro. You really are amazing.

[@darkfrozen1860]

Amazing explanation. Cleared my linux root stuff as well.

[@Scupperjack]

I did watch the computer expert video mentioned. Twice. I am now, with all my other computer experience, a three dimensional computer conglomeration that will soon take over the known universe. BTW, I date back to the time when programs where loaded with paper tape. Thanks ThioJoe. I have to go empty some worthless bit buckets now.

[@killrather]

I SUBSCRIBED after seeing 10 youtube tricks do that more

[@howardsix9708]

I LEARNED A LOT THANKS THIOJOE

[@jerryfacts9749]

I worked on large server systems using huge databases where the data and systems were backed up on to tape drives. These drives were assigned to drive's A and B.

[@Berzerkarnus]

I actually assigned one of my drives as a B drive