5.1

n
REMOVABLE – Indicates removable media.
For example, a disk drive, thumb drive, or flash card reader.
n
CD-ROM – Indicates a CD-ROM drive.
n
RAMDISK—Indicates a RAM disk.
Virtual drives are useful when applications rely on hard-coded paths to drive letters that might not be
available on the deployment systems. For example, legacy applications might expect that the D: drive is a
CD-ROM and that the data files are available at D:\media.
Virtual drive settings override the physical properties of the drive on the physical deployment system. If the
VirtualDrives parameter defines a drive type as CD-ROM, and the physical drive is a hard disk, the
application on the deployment system detects that drive as a CD-ROM drive.
Isolation Modes for Virtual Drives
Virtual drives are visible only to applications running in the virtual environment. Virtual drives do not
affect the physical Windows environment. Virtual drives inherit isolation modes from the default isolation
mode of the project unless you override the mode with a ##Attributes.ini file in the drive folder within the
project directory.
If you copy files to the %drive_D% folder before building the application, you can use Full isolation mode for
this drive. The application always reads from the virtual drive and does not try to read from any
corresponding physical CD-ROM drive on the deployment system.
If you do not copy files to the %drive_D% folder before building the application, you can use Merged or
WriteCopy isolation modes for virtual drive folders depending on whether you want to read from and write
to the physical drive on the deployment system.
If you assign Merged isolation mode to your virtual drive, any write operations to that drive fail if that drive
does not exist on the physical deployment system. ThinApp does not direct changes to the sandbox because
Merged isolation mode instructs ThinApp to write to the physical drive. When the application cannot write
to the physical drive as directed, the write operations fail.
The VirtualDrives parameter does not override isolation mode settings. A virtual application might not
detect files on a physical drive because of isolation mode settings.
Modifying Virtual Drive Isolation Modes
You can modify isolation modes for virtual drives, to override the default isolation mode of the project.
1 Add the %Drive_<letter>% directory to your ThinApp project.
2 Create a ##Attributes.ini file that includes an isolation mode entry for the drive letter.
[Isolation]
DirectoryIsolationMode=<isolation_mode>
3 Place the ##Attributes.ini file in the %Drive_<letter>% directory.
Example: Assigning a Serial Number and FIXED Type to a Virtual Drive
The VirtualDrives parameter is a single string that can hold information about multiple drive letters, and
optional parameters for those drive letters. The parameter uses semicolons to separate information assigned
to different drive letters and commas to separate parameters for individual drive letters. ThinApp assigns a
serial number and the FIXED type to the drive.
[BuildOptions]
VirtualDrives= Drive=A, Serial=12345678, Type=REMOVABLE; Drive=B, Serial=9ABCDEF0, Type=FIXED
Chapter 11 Configuring File Storage
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