While it is true that NT does not have concept of drive letters (and current directory for that matter), it does not internally do equivalent of unix mounting, it just presents volumes in predetermined places of directory hierarchy.
The fact that large swatches of win32 API are implemented as userspace abstractions is wonderful source of weird windows behavior. For example, changing current directory is not thread safe (not only in the way that you don't know which directory is really current in presence of multiple threads changing it, but SetCurrentDirectory() itself is not an atomic operation)
> it does not internally do equivalent of unix mounting, it just presents volumes in predetermined places of directory hierarchy
Why does it matter what it does internally (unless you are knee deep in WDK work)? SetVolumeMountPoint() pretty much acts like mount() as far as the userspace is concerned.
Re:On the state of Windows on the desktop
by CurtHagenlocher on Monday January 14, 2013 @10:22AM
(#5054951)
Drive letters actually go back quite a bit further. They originated on IBM big iron, and made it to MS-DOS via CP/M.
What if you can't access Windows Update? The last time I installed Windows 7 on a laptop (a HP netbook to be exact), it supported neither of wireless and ethernet adapters. Luckily I had my phone to tether to (with Bluetooth); drivers for ethernet were not available in Windows Update, though.
Drive letters are a hang back from DOS. Ironically at a very low level, NT doesn't have the concept of drive letters at all and does volume mounting as per *NIX systems. That's all down to Win32.