Remove Drive:
RemoveDrive prepares drives for "Safe Removal" by commandline. It works with drives only but not for other device types.
Details here:http://www.uwe-sieber.de/drivetools_e.html
Junction points originated as a solution to the problem of needing more than 26 drive letters. If you wanted to install more than 26 drives in Windows NT, you were stuck after you used Z—you were out of letters. Junction points let you install 27 (or more) drives. After you install your 27th drive, the new drive sits in Logical Disk Manager (LDM), formatted and ready to use but basically inaccessible because Win2K has no name to give it. To make the drive accessible, you can use junction points to make the drive look like a directory on an existing volume. After you create a directory (e.g., C:\extradrive) on an existing drive, you connect your unnamed drive to C:\extradrive (I explain how later in this article). From that point on, writing data to C:\extradrive puts the data on a different physical drive than writing data to C:\winnt.
The missing piece in this procedure is how you "glue" the letterless drive to the directory—that is, what you call the drive. Every drive has a globally unique identifier (GUID). You use the drive's GUID and a standard Win2K command called Mountvol to hook up the drive to the directory. A typical Mountvol command might look like
Suppose that directory is on the C drive and you happen to have an E drive that has plenty of space. First, stop the Spooler service and clean out the C:\winnt\system32\spool\printers directory. Then, reparse the E drive to C:\winnt\system32\spool\printers. Restart the Spooler service and—voilà—no more filled-up system drive.
The one wrinkle in this approach is finding the GUID for drive E. Mountvol can tell you the GUID, but wouldn't you rather simply type something like
http://www.windowsitpro.com/article/storage-management/the-linkd-utility
Specifying specific drives (e.g. "c e") will result in Sync only flushing those drives.
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb897438.aspx
RemoveDrive prepares drives for "Safe Removal" by commandline. It works with drives only but not for other device types.
RemoveDrive DriveSpec: [-l][-h][-b][-i][-s][-w:nnnn]
DriveSpec is the drive to remove, e.g. U: or an NTFS mountpoint as "C:\CardReader\Multi Reader SD"
or . for the current drive
or \ for the drive of the RemoveDrive.exe
or a volume name like \\?\Volume{433619ed-c6ea-11d9-a3b2-806d6172696f}
or a kernel name like \Device\HarddiskVolume2 (Volume)
or a kernel name like \Device\Harddisk2\DR0 (Disk)
or a partition name like \Device\Harddisk2\Partition1
or a device ID
or a friendly name like 'Corsair Voyager'
Wildcards can be used.
[-L] loop until success
[-e] try to dismount and eject if the removal fails
[-h] show open handles (admin rights required, exprimental, may freeze!)
[-h:X] show open handles on a different drive (e.g. a TrueCrypt volume whose container is on the drive to remove)
[-w:nnnn] wait nnnn milliseconds before close
[-s] self delete removedrive.exe
[-b] let Windows show the "Safe To Remove Hardware" balloon tip
[-i] stop Windows indexing service (CiSvc) for a moment if required (admins)
[-d] show debug information
Details here:http://www.uwe-sieber.de/drivetools_e.html
Linkd
Have you ever needed a simple way to expand a drive that's quickly running out of space? Windows 2000's support for junction points can be the solution.Junction points originated as a solution to the problem of needing more than 26 drive letters. If you wanted to install more than 26 drives in Windows NT, you were stuck after you used Z—you were out of letters. Junction points let you install 27 (or more) drives. After you install your 27th drive, the new drive sits in Logical Disk Manager (LDM), formatted and ready to use but basically inaccessible because Win2K has no name to give it. To make the drive accessible, you can use junction points to make the drive look like a directory on an existing volume. After you create a directory (e.g., C:\extradrive) on an existing drive, you connect your unnamed drive to C:\extradrive (I explain how later in this article). From that point on, writing data to C:\extradrive puts the data on a different physical drive than writing data to C:\winnt.
The missing piece in this procedure is how you "glue" the letterless drive to the directory—that is, what you call the drive. Every drive has a globally unique identifier (GUID). You use the drive's GUID and a standard Win2K command called Mountvol to hook up the drive to the directory. A typical Mountvol command might look like
mountvol C:\extradrive
\\?\Volume{47c8cd01-1a1f-11d5-aa7f-806d6172696f}\
But as I mentioned earlier, you can also use junction points to expand a drive. For example, if you've ever set up a server for a group of printers or for users who print long documents, you know that users write amazingly large quantities of data to spool files. Win2K temporarily queues printer spool files in \winnt\system32\spool\printers. The OS is also in that directory, so you definitely don't want that directory's drive to fill up.Suppose that directory is on the C drive and you happen to have an E drive that has plenty of space. First, stop the Spooler service and clean out the C:\winnt\system32\spool\printers directory. Then, reparse the E drive to C:\winnt\system32\spool\printers. Restart the Spooler service and—voilà—no more filled-up system drive.
The one wrinkle in this approach is finding the GUID for drive E. Mountvol can tell you the GUID, but wouldn't you rather simply type something like
linkd C:\winnt\system32\spool\printers E:
http://www.windowsitpro.com/article/storage-management/the-linkd-utility
Sync
UNIX provides a standard utility called Sync, which can be used to direct the operating system to flush all file system data to disk in order to insure that it is stable and won't be lost in case of a system failure. Otherwise, any modified data present in the cache would be lost. Here is an equivalent that I wrote, called Sync, that works on all versions of Windows. Use it whenever you want to know that modified file data is safely stored on your hard drives. Unfortunately, Sync requires administrative privileges to run. This version also lets you flush removable drives such as ZIP drives.Using Sync
Usage: sync [-r] [-e] [drive letter list]| -r | Flush removable drives. |
| -e | Ejects removable drives. |
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb897438.aspx
