Dosbox Emulator FAQ: How to Mount a Hard Drive or CD-Rom in Dobox

Author: Glenn Scrima

So you downloaded Dosbox and got it up and running for the first time only to find this mysterious Z: drive staring back at you. Even more mysterious is the fact that your computer's real drives are now completely inaccessible. Don't panic yet though, you can make Dosbox aware of them by following just a few simple steps. Here's a quick guide on how to get it done.


How to Mount a Hard Drive:

To get started we first need the letter of the hard drive you want to mount in Dosbox. Normally your main hard drive is the C: drive but you can double check by looking under "My Computer" in Windows.


Now assuming the drive letter is C: (although it can be other letters as well) lets look at the actual commands you will have to enter to allow Dosbox to see this drive.

The command "mount" is always the way you would begin mounting a drive. After that you would enter the actual drive letter that you wish to assign to this drive. Just to make it clear this letter can be virtually any letter you want, as long as you don't have another drive already assigned to that letter. So for instance I might want to mount the C: drive on my computer but I'd rather make it a D: drive. To do this would mean simply making your second command a "d" instead of a "c". It would look like this:

mount d c:\

The last part "c:\" is the original drive letter you are changing, in this case you would be changing it to the drive letter "d".


How to Mount a Windows Directory as a Hard Drive:

You can also take a directory on your hard drive and trick DOS into thinking its its own drive. For instance lets say you store all your old dos games in the directory "c:\oldgames". Normally when you're at the C: drive prompt in Dosbox you would have to type "cd oldgames" to access this directory. Then you would have to type in an additional command to access the sub-directory where the game you wish to play is located (for example "cd pandora" if it was The Pandora Directive). This multi-step process would be shortened by simply making the "oldgames" directory the C: drive itself. Therefore when you are at the C: drive prompt you would only see the folders in the "c:\oldgames" directory, in this case it would be all your old DOS games.

Using the "c:\oldgames" directory mentioned above as an example, this is what the mount command would look like.


How to Mount a CD-ROM Drive:

Mounting a CD-ROM drive on your computer is very similar to the methods above, all you need is an extra command. So just like the methods used for a hard drive there is a "mount" command followed by the "assigned letter command" finally followed by the "location of the drive" command. The only difference would be the need for one additional command, "-t cdrom". This command allows Dosbox to make the distinction that this drive is a CD-ROM drive and not simply a hard drive.

Assuming the CD-ROM drive is "D:" on your computer here is what the mount command would look like.



How to Enter Any of These Mount Commands in Dosbox:

So now that you're more familiar with mounting drives in Dosbox the last question is where do you enter these commands? There is two answers to that question.

Method 1: The most basic way to enter these commands is when you open Dosbox and you're looking at the command prompt. This is an example of what that might look like.


Method 2: This is probably the better method for entering commands if you plan to enter them each time you run Dosbox. To avoid having to do this simply go into the folder where you keep the Dosbox program and find the dosbox.conf file. Right click on this file and select "open with" and choose notepad.


Now with the config file open scroll down to the bottom and find the section named [autoexec]. You can place your mount commands below this section title and not have to reenter them each time you run Dosbox. Here is an example of what mounting both a hard drive directory and a CD-ROM drive might look like.

When you finish entering your mount commands save and exit the config file. The next time you run Dosbox it will automatically recognize these new drives.

Well hopefully I helped you get started in running your old games again. Enjoy and have a great weekend everyone!

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