Subst command
The subst command lets you substitute a virtual drive letter for another drive letter on your computer.
Availability
Subst is an external command that is available for the following Microsoft operating systems as subst.exe.
- MS-DOS 3.1x and above
- Windows 95
- Windows 98
- Windows Me
- Windows NT
- Windows 2000
- Windows XP
- Windows Vista
- Windows 7
- Windows 8
- Windows 10
- Windows 11
Subst syntax
Associates a path with a drive letter.
SUBST [drive1: [drive2:]path] SUBST drive1: /D
| drive1: | Specifies a virtual drive you want to assign a path. |
| [drive2:]path | Specifies a physical drive and path you want to assign to a virtual drive. |
| /D | Deletes a substituted (virtual) drive. |
Type SUBST with no parameters to display a list of current virtual drives.
Subst examples
subst a: .
Sets the current directory and subdirectories as the A: drive. So, if you were to type A: after executing this command, you would see everything in the directory from which the command was run.
If you reboot the computer, any subst command is cleared unless it was placed into autoexec.bat or another location that's executed upon starting the computer.
You cannot subst network drives and after a drive is created, you cannot give the new drive a new label.