I still don't understand. Or rather, i think you may be confused as to what it is you are trying to do. (or worst, (but ill give you the benefit of the doubt), you are more concerned about seeming knowledgeable than asking any real questions):
You mention mounting drives a few times.
Mounting refers to making the drive accessible through the filesystem. The OS takes care of this.
You *could* write an application that does not make use of the filesystem and writes to the drive directly. You would need to to implement the file system driver, but its feasible. However I strongly doubt that is what you are trying to do.
Either way, you shouldnt' need to mount the drive yourself. Windows will mount the drive automatically, and made accessible through the file system.
If you read about "the file system" in the GMS manual, you will find a section that describes how the sandbox limits read and write operations:
Reading is limited to the working directory and the save area.
Writing is limited to the save area.
However you can bypass the sandbox with get_open_filename and get_save_filename which will prompt the used to select a path. those files will then be made read/writable by GMS.
Im going to explain what I was thinking that made me post this question in this forum.
I want to program an option that will allow the user to save storage space on their local hard drive, by allowing the use of a external device such as a USB flash drive or USB hard drive. That way the user can save their save postions in my game ( which is complex of games ) and the data that the game produces that is written to the game directories. When someone plugs a USB device into a USB port of a Windows PC, the Windows OS detects this and mounts the device to the tree of devices that I see when I open a directory window. To all the other programs running on the machine, can see this and when you use their open file option , you can connect to the USB flash drive to access the files. To sum it up, thats what I call the mounting process, when a USB flash drive is mounted automatically by Windows.
Now lets look at GMS. According to the manual, the game segregates the game from the rest of the windows OS system of the device ( the local hard drive of where game would be installed or where GMS places the game during its development ) in what GMS refers as the sandbox. What I did not know is if the sandbox wouldn't let me access a external USB flash drive even though it is mounted by Windows, because GMS might not know its there.
I was thinking of the GMS sandbox of being similar to operating like the Linux OS. In Red Hat 9, you use the "mount" command in order for the USB flash drive to be recognized. When I was using gcc in Red Hat 9, I had to use the Linux command "mount" everytime I plugged in a USB flash drive and use the "unmount" command to tell the OS, when I am going to unplug the USB flash drive. Thats where I came up the alternative idea, "...oh man, Im going to have to invent something like Linux "mount" and "unmount" commands as two functions in GMS, for Windows ! ".
GMS does not work like that. Now, I know that I dont have to invent such commands in GMS ( and I really dont want to ).
The problem is not in the programming, the problem which I was not sure of, is how GMS works with windows OS in this matter.
Since I did not know ( as I stated in my post ) is the reason why I posted the question.
thats an entirely separate issue. Huge pain. my advice: don't rely on long paths. Let the user realize windows is a steaming pile of crap and in 25 years maybe microsoft will fix it.
In regarding the file path problem, I came to the same conclusion you have stated. The key word you state, "MAYBE" microsoft will fix it, or not , is how I view Microsoft's management of their products. But the solution to that problem , might be easier said than done.
So you're right in saying that.