how to access different directories outside cygwin home dir

I have installed dropbox in my computer, but it is located outside my cygwin directory. The probably easiest way would be to just move the dropbox directory to cygwin's home dir. Anyway I wonder if it is possible to browse to my dropbox directory from cygwin instead?

Solution 1:

You can access the root of your C: drive, for example, from cygwin by specifying the directory /cygdrive/c, e.g.,

$ cd /cygdrive/c

Similarly, the path to any file on your C: drive can be constructed by prefixing the Windows path (without the "C:" and with \s changed to /s) with /cygdrive/c, so C:\Dropbox\myfile would be accessed from within Cygwin as /cygdrive/c/Dropbox/myfile.

Solution 2:

If you really wanted it available in Cygwin, besides getting it directly (as @garyjohn's correct answer) you can also try to use the mount command to map the path to your home dir. Something like this may work.

mount C:\dropbox\cygwin /home/me/dropbox

I say may, because though I'm pretty sure it will work, I have no Cygwin install to test it, and I'm not sure if Cygwin will refuse to create it because of filesystem loops (it should allow it)