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What is \\?\Volume

Thready

I don't know what I'm looking at here. I googled it but nothing comes up. Any thoughts?

 

image.png.42ab5700bd3e11d1f2fc7b9beef4ef6b.png

Photographer, future counselor, computer teacher.

3600X and RTX 2070 with too many storage drives to count. 

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Looks like an old Windows recovery partition. Did you upgrade to Windows 10 instead of a clean install?

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The drive name is specified by two parts the prefix and the volume name. First the prefix

 

\\?\<path>


Microsoft writes:

Quote

For file I/O, the "\\?\" prefix to a path string tells the Windows APIs to disable all string parsing and to send the string that follows it straight to the file system. For example, if the file system supports large paths and file names, you can exceed the MAX_PATH limits that are otherwise enforced by the Windows APIs.

Which means that you can use otherwise forbidden characters like "." or ".." in filenames. Or have very very long path/filenames etc.

Win32 File Namespaces

Then your path:

 

Volume{GUID}



Microsoft writes:

Quote

Several factors can make it difficult to identify specific volumes using only drive letters and labels. One is that a volume is not required to have a drive letter or a label. Another is that two different volumes can have the same label, which makes them indistinguishable except by drive letter. A third factor is that drive letter assignments can change as volumes are added to and removed from the computer.

To solve this problem, the operating system uses volume GUID paths to identify volumes. These are strings of this form:
 

"\\?\Volume{GUID}\"
 

where GUID is a globally unique identifier (GUID) that identifies the volume.

So it is microsofts way to enforce uniqueness of the name "Volume" across say a network.

Naming a volume


What the volume is actually used for i can't answer.

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On 11/25/2020 at 3:44 PM, WoodenMarker said:

Looks like an old Windows recovery partition. Did you upgrade to Windows 10 instead of a clean install?

No I did a clean install

Photographer, future counselor, computer teacher.

3600X and RTX 2070 with too many storage drives to count. 

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