@boogiewoogie - Give me a a small break without bustin my chops lol. Mount in a folder/mount as a folder yadda yadda yadda. Potato patato.. I've been on Mac for the past 25 years so forgive me lol....

@orbitbooster - Thank you for the suggestion & link!!!

@shinjiya - I truly am having a hard time following your suggestion. I appreciate your reply though.


As for this whole external drive mounted to a folder. I simply don't understand why the same drive mounted with a letter would make a difference regarding symlinks. It hurts my headed trying to figure this Windows stuff out sometimes.

 

Haha of course Mac
Since windows is just "plug it in, get a drive letter" haha

 

I got some of the steps inverted, sorry about that. Windows is less intuitive because it wants the location of the link before the real location, I often write it inverted. Let's try it again.

I will try to break it down into steps, let me know if you need anything to be clarified further. A side note, however, is that I don't know if junctions work with mount points. You can try a symlink if it doesn't work, I'll note it with the instructions.

Try this:
1. Open the installer you're having trouble with and take note of the location it wants to install to. Mine is "C:\ProgramData\Arturia", check if yours is also the same.
2. Close the installer (do not install anything yet), check the location and see if the folder exists. Supposing you're starting from zero, delete the Arturia folder if it exists. The link will only work if there is no folder or existing link with the same name.
3. Open CMD as admin (Win+R, type cmd, press ctrl+shift+enter to start as admin - this is important)
4. type the following, one line at a time:

Code:

mkdir "C:\ExtDrive1\Arturia"

^ This is where you want the Arturia files to be installed. Change the location according to where your mount point is.

Code:

mklink /J "C:\ProgramData\Arturia" "C:\ExtDrive1\Arturia"

^ "C:\ProgramData\Arturia" refers to step 1. "C:\ExtDrive1\Arturia" is the same location you used in the previous command. Change "mklink /J" to "mklink /D" if a junction does not work, and you want to try a symlink instead.

5. You should receive a confirmation for the creation of the junction. If you get a "You can't create an already existing file" error, that means you inverted the locations or there is a rogue symlink or folder with the same name where you're trying to create the junction.
6. Install the software normally, with default settings. Do not change locations or check the symlink option.

If everything worked well, you'll see the folder you created inside the mount point being populated by the files during the installation. If not, the installer will probably throw an error.

Let me know if it worked or if there's anything unclear.

 

@shinjiya Appreciate the time you & others have taken to help me out with this. I've tried all suggestions & tips with no luck.

What does work - Assigning the external drive with a letter (like A:\ or Z:\) instead of using mountpoint folders when symbolic links are used for the Arturia resource folder. I have 19 external drives. Guess it looks like I should change all of them back to regular mounted drives A-Z instead of using the folder mountpoints in case other installers and programs have the same issue. I just wish symbolic links worked with Arturia resource folder when external hard drives are mounted using mountpoint folders...

If anyone knows why a symbolic link would behave differently when using folder mountpoints as the target instead of regular drive letter method. Feel free to chime in.

Thanks again everybody.

 

It would be really helpful if you could provide any information about what didn't work. It's hard to guess where things went wrong or what happened in your screen that ended not being successful. Sadly, I don't have a spare drive here to try it myself and see what would happen on my machine.

Edit:
The thing about how frustrating this is, is because a mount point is a symlink. It takes a disk volume and gives it a path that funnels files outside your disk. If I make a symlink, I can nest several more symlinks inside this symlink. If a viable solution is not working, it's better to understand why and where it doesn't work, so we can troubleshoot it.

 

Last edited: Apr 29, 2023

@shinjiya Ill write up to inform you all what went wrong & What partially worked. Not trying to be lazy, but I’ve been on the computer way too much the past several days. I will try to explain the best I can tomorrow.

 

Last edited: Apr 30, 2023