Mount (computing)

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Mounting, in computer science, is the process of making a file system ready for use by the operating system, typically by reading certain index data structures from storage into memory ahead of time. The term recalls a period in the history of computing when an operator had to physically place (mount) a magnetic tape or hard disk on a spindle before using it.

1 Mount point
2 Microsoft Windows
3 See also
4 External links

Mount point

In Unix-like systems, the mount point is the location in the operating system's directory structure where a mounted file system appears. For example, many modern Linux distributions automatically mount the CD drive as /media/cdrom, so the contents of the CD drive will appear in the /media/cdrom directory.

Normally only the root user can mount a new file system usually using the mount utility, but there are often provisions to allow normal users to mount removable media, such as the pmount package.

Microsoft Windows

The equivalent to mounting in Microsoft Windows is known as mapping a drive. In these systems, all files and directories available to the operating system and its users are to be found relative to the root directory (\), whether those directories are on the same machine or not.

Microsoft's NTFS 3 also supports Volume Mount Points through the use of NTFS reparse points, which allows volumes to be mounted at arbitrary locations in the file system in addition to the standard drive letters (e.g. C:, E:).