Add microSD files to you Surface RT media Libraries

I was spending some quality time with my Surface last night, testing my BT headphones for connectivity (all 4 connected btw) and realized that music I had copied to my microSD card was not appearing in my XBox Music Library. Like most Surface owners, I added a 32GB microSD card the day I got my device and created three folders for; Music, Pictures & Videos. The plan was to use the microSD for all of my media, reserving the 18GB of remaining space (after overhead, OS, Office, etc.) on my 32GB Surface for apps, documents, etc. I tried adding the microSD Music folder to my Music Library, but I got an error indicating that as my “D” drive (microSD) was removable, it couldn’t be included. Fortunately Paul Thurrott ran into the same problem and published a fix (thanks DavidK for the tip).

The fix is rather simple and involves fooling the Surface into believing that your “D” drive actually resides within your fixed “C” drive. I will summarize the steps below, but if your mind is graphical (like mine) , you can find the original post here.

– Create a new folder on your C drive labeled SD, like; C:\SD (you can name the folder whatever you prefer)

– Open Computer Management/Disk Management. You can find this in Control Panel under Administrative Tools, or use the key combination WinKey + X and click Disk Management from the popup menu.

-In Disk Management, locate your microSD card and right click. Choose, “Change Drive Letter and Paths”. Click “Add”, and then select, “Mount in the following empty NTSF folder”.

-Click “Browse” to find the folder that you created above, C:\SD in our example. Now, all of your microSD folders will appear in two places in File Explorer; under C:\SD and under the drive letter assigned to the microSD, D:\ in my case.

-For each Library entry, add the folder from you microSD card. So, right click Libraries>Music, and left click Properties. You should see My Music and Public Music as the two current folders in the Music Library. Click “Add” and navigate to C:\SD\Music (or whatever you labeled your subfolders) to add your microSD Music folder to the Library.

-Repeat the above steps for each Library, including Documents if you prefer.

Now, provided you organize your music by; Artist > Album > Track, everything will appear as it should within XBox Music > My Music. Same for Videos and Pictures. As this will probably be something that most everyone using a microSD card will want to do, it would be nice if Microsoft could create a Wizard to automate the process. But, it’s honestly not that easy to mess up. Good stuff.

Article originally appeared on WinSupersite