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I want to mount a WIM image as a new drive letter on Windows 10.

As follows from Microsoft documentation for DISM Image Management Command-Line Options, DISM can only mount a WIM image to an existing directory. Powershell Mount-DiskImage can only do what I want with VHD or ISO images (no mention of WIM in the docs).

The question: What is a practical way of having my .wim-file content attached to a drive letter (say, z:) that is not in use for anything else?

The main reason I want to do this is convenience of browsing the content. I made a WIM image to backup what used to be z:, now I need to access it, preferably as z:. Also, I noticed that opening WIM image using 7zip is much faster than mounting it to an existing file system. So I hope treating WIM as a separate logical drive will avoid this costly overhead.

I would appreciate the answer to my question, as well as any comments that correct any misunderdestanding of mine (such as whether WIM is a really bad choice for a backup).

Update 1. (responding to Ramhound's comment) I tried 

dism /Mount-Wim /WimFile:c:\foo.wim /Index:1 /MountDir:z:

The error message is:

The user attempted to mount to a directory that does not exist. This is not supported.
paperskilltrees
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1 Answers1

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There is an old trick that dates back to DOS epoch, when The Windows had not existed yet, but still supported:

SUBST [drive1: [drive2:]path]

e.g.

C:\> Dism /mount-Image /ImageFile:c:\foo.wim /index:1 /mountdir:C:\mnt\wim1 /readonly /optimize
C:\> subst Z: c:\mnt\wim1

This operation is not privileged, and, contrast to "normal" mounts, this substitution exists only within your current windows session, hence invisible to other users and discarded on logoff.

jabba
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