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On my work computer I have two USB hard drives that I use rarely (only for backups). They have a power save mode that sends them into sleep after a couple of minutes of them being idle. But whenever I open a context menu on a file, the drives are woken up (most likely caused by the "send to" handler). This causes a delay that gets really annoying really fast.

So I was wondering, is there a way to just unmount the drives and then remount them later on when I actually need them? I'm looking for a solution for Windows 7 (Ultimate if it makes a difference).

When I eject the drive, I can't find a way to get it back, other than unplugging and replugging it in.

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Remove the drive letters using mountvol or diskmgmt.msc. Without a drive letter, they won't appear under Computer or Send To.

mountvol Q: /d

Reassign when needed, using the volume ID printed by mountvol:

mountvol Q: \\?\Volume{1be3da43-6602-11e0-b9e6-f11e1c50f5b5}\

You can also mount the volume on an empty folder (Unix style) using the same tools:

mkdir fs\backup-disk
mountvol fs\backup-disk \\?\Volume{1be3da43-6602-11e0-b9e6-f11e1c50f5b5}\

All these operations require Administrator privileges.

(In fact, you might even be able to directly use the volume ID in your backup scripts, without having to mount it anywhere. For example, \\?\Volume{1be3da43-6602-11e0-b9e6-f11e1c50f5b5}\projects instead of Q:\projects.)

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This is awesome. Thanks a lot. – Oliver Salzburg Jun 11 '11 at 21:33
By the way, is that GUID tied to the device? Will it be the same if I plug the device into another Windows machine? Is it even static between reboots on the same machine? – Oliver Salzburg Jun 11 '11 at 21:53
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@gencha: The volume GUID is tied to that specific volume, and persists after reboots. (It has to, in order for persistent drive letter assignments and filesystem mounts to work.) But unfortunately it's local to the machine. (As far as I know, Windows has no way to reference volumes by label or filesystem UUID yet.) – grawity Jun 12 '11 at 8:39
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@gencha: Although if you browse the Object Manager using WinObj, you'll find more symlinks pointing to the same \Device\...: for example, to access my iPod I can use E:\Music or \\?\STORAGE#RemovableMedia#7&bec343e&0&RM#{53f5630a-b6bf-11d0-94f2-00a0c91efb8b}‌​\Music... But again, those appear to be variable between machines. – grawity Jun 12 '11 at 8:50
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