2 Nov 2016

Pin to taskbar from SD card on Windows 10

You will most likely need to use a micro SD card for additional storage if you purchase a low end Windows 10 netbook like the Asus E200HA, Lenovo Ideapad 100S, Acer Cloudbook or HP stream. Apart from the fact that an SD card will be slower than the internal MMC netbook drive, there is another caveat that you should be aware of...

Windows 10 won't let you pin anything that's saved on removable storage (ie. your SD card) to the taskbar! This means that by default you will not be able to create taskbar shortcuts to any programs that you install to the SD card.

The good news is that there is a work around! What you need to do is mount your SD card in a directory on drive C instead of it having its own removable drive letter assignment (as drive D or anything else).

Here's how you do this:

  1. Backup all data that is currently on your SD card
  2. Create a new, empty folder at C:\sdcard (or similar on drive C)
  3. Open control Panel
  4. Open Administrative Tools
  5. Open Computer Management
  6. Select Disk Management
  7. Right click your removable SD card drive and select 'Change Drive Letter and Paths'
  8. Remove any drive letter assignment for your SD card
  9. Select 'Add' and then choose 'Mount in the following empty NTFS folder'
  10. Browse to your C:\sdcard directory, select OK and then the only path to your SD card should be C:\sdcard as shown in the dialog below ...

Now if you install to and open programs from your SD card at the C:\sdcard path, you should be able to  'Pin to 'taskbar'.