DOSBox Guide - Mounting Dives in DOSBox

Mounting Dives in DOSBox

One of the most common problems that people have with using DOSBox is with mounting drives for DOSBox to use. Real drives, folders and disk images can all be used to mount drives for DOSBox. Drives can be mounted from the command line in DOSBox, from batch files or shortcuts used to launch games in DOSBox or from the [autoexec] section of the dosbox.conf file (the DOSBox configuration file).

A couple of cautions about mounting drives in DOSBox:

DON'T mount your actual c:\ drive. This places your real system drive and OS at risk.
DOSBox will see paths starting form the mounted "C:" drive. If you mount "C:\GAMES" as DOSBox's "C:" drive, Windows will see any subfolders, say SEIRRA, as "C:\GAMES\SIERRA" and DOSBox will see it as "C:\SIERRA". If you install a game from Windows, any paths in configuration files will not be the same as what DOSBox will see. Install your games from within DOSBox to avoid this.

When you start DOSBox you will see a "Z:\>" prompt. This drive letter is reserved for DOSBox's internal use. You will need to mount "drives" to give DOSBox access to your game's files, using the mount command. The mount command tells DOSBox to mount a folder, drive or disk image as a drive in DOSBox. The -t parameter tells DOSBox what kind of drive to mount it as (dir, floppy or cdrom.)

Message
Z:\>SET BLASTER=A220 I7 D1 H5 T6

Z:\>_

To Mount a "C:\" drive
To Mount a Floppy drive
To Mount a CD drive
Automating Drive Mounting

Mounting a "C:\" drive

Make a folder on your hard drive for DOSBox's "C:\" drive.. If this folder is on your C: drive and named GAMES, it will be C:\GAMES. To give DOSBox access to this folder as DOSBox's C:\ drive, mount it by typing "mount c c:\hero" and Enter.

Message
Z:\>SET BLASTER=A220 I7 D1 H5 T6

Z:\>_

Z:\>mount c c:\hero
Drive C is mounted as local directory c:\hero

Z:\>_

Where:

mount -		Tells the program to mount a folder or drive as a drive in DOSBox
c -		Tells DOSBox the folder will be mounted as drive "C:"
c:\hero -		Tells DOSBox the path and folder to mount as a drive (where "hero" is the folder of the game you want to run -- change this to your game's real folder name)

IMPORTANT: If your game's folder's name has any spaces in it, you must enclose the path and folder name in quotation marks, i.e. "C:\My Game")

Some like to put all of their DOS games' folders in a "GAMES" folder and mount that as their "C:" drive. Any of the games in this folder can then be accessed by that DOSBox session by that single mount command (i.e. mount c c:\games.) This can set to automatically be mounted every time DOSBox is started by the [autoexec] section of the dosbox.conf file.

Mounting a Floppy drive

You can mount your floppy drive by typing "mount a a:\ -t floppy"

Z:\>mount a a:\ -t floppy
Drive A is mounted as local directory a:\

Z:\>_

You can also mount a folder on your hard drive as a floppy. Just change the "a:\" in the above mount mount command for the folder you want to use as your floppy.

NOTE: Some games will look for disk labels. You can assign a label by adding the -label parameter to the end of the mount command. So "mount a c:\floppy -t floppy -label disk1" would mount a folder on the C: drive named "floppy" as a floppy disk in DOSBox that has the disk label of "DISK1"

Mounting a CD drive

You can mount your CD drive by typing "mount d d:\ -t cdrom" (assuming that "D:\" is the drive letter that your CD has.

Z:\>mount d d:\ -t cdrom
Drive D is mounted as local directory d:\

Z:\>_

You can also mount a folder on your hard drive as a CD. Just change the "d:\" in the above mount mount command for the folder you want to use as your floppy.

NOTE 1: You might experience problems with some CD games. There are different levels of support that you can use with DOSBox by adding one of the following parameter at the end of your mount command (after the -t cdrom parameter):

-usecd 0 (SDL-cdrom support. Change the 0 in -usecd 0 to the number of your cdrom drive reported by mount -cd)

-ioctl (Ioctl cdrom support)

-aspi (ASPI cdrom support)

Try basic support first. Second in line is SDL-support and finally IOCTL/ASPI support. IOCTL support is for Windows NT/2000/XP/2003 or Linux.

NOTE 2: Some games will look for disk labels. You can assign a label by adding the -label parameter to the end of the mount command. So "mount a c:\floppy -t floppy -label disk1" would mount a folder on the C: drive named "floppy" as a floppy disk in DOSBox that has the disk label of "DISK1"

Automating Drive Mounting:

Using the [autoexec]

You can automatically have your drives mounted every time you start DOSBox by adding mount commands to the [autoexec] section of the dosbox.conf file. Open the dosbox.conf file in Notepad and scroll to the [autoexec] section at the bottom. Copy the above commands here. Example:

[autoexec]
# Lines in this section will be run at startup.

mount c c:\games
mount d d:\ -t cdrom -ioctl

will automatically mount a c:\games folder as the C: drive and drive D: as a CD-ROM drive everytime that DOSBox is started.

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