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→Volume Designators
Relative pathnames are often the shortest form of pathname, but the meaning of a relative pathname changes based on the current working directory.
== Volume Designators ==
On Windows systems, a volume designator consisting of a letter followed by a colon may prefix a pathname. The volume may be a partition on a disk drive (HDD or SSD), a network storage location, or a multi-drive volume, where multiple partitions or disks are combined into a single storage pool.
Since the original IBM PC was designed to have up to two floppy disk drives, designated A: and B:, the main/first disk drive in a Windows system is usually designated as volume C:
Therefore, the \Windows folder on the main/first disk drive on a Windows system may be referred to as
C:\Windows
The volume designator is case-insensitive.
Each unique volume on a Windows system has its own root directory and its own current working directory.
To switch between volumes, type the volume designator by itself:
C:
Or
E:
On a Linux system, instead of using drive designators, volumes are ''mounted'' into the filesystem hierarchy -- that is, volumes are attached as directories, creating a unified hierarchy with a single root directory.
