20:15 Jun 2, 2011 

Sorry about my Mac ignorance. I'm afraid my knowledge of Mac is limited to the observation that they tend to put things on the market in a closer to finished state than MS. : o )

13:42 Jun 2, 2011 

As a long-time Mac user, I suppose I'm biased and should shut up when a discussion involves Windows. The Disk Utility application on a Mac asks the user to mount a disk or volume, hence my suggestion.

13:07 Jun 2, 2011 

The asker has given us a definition. The drive, volume or virtual disk being used is for temporary storage of files exclusively for the purpose of exchanging them. It is clearly what is referred to as a file exchange (or sometimes "data exchange") drive.

Imo, using "virtual disk" would simply be misleading and non-standard. "Volume" is neither much used nor very transparent either. The most common term for in this context is certainly "drive".

Incidentally, I prefer "file exchange .." over "data exchange.." because the former makes it clear that we're talking about discrete bundles of data packed in files rather than, e.g. data streams.

12:57 Jun 2, 2011 

Maybe "virtual disk" oder "volume" would be better terms to denote memory (temporarily?) set aside for file sharing/swapping. Whatever the case may be, the Tauschlaufwerk seems to have a server function.

10:18 Jun 1, 2011 

Jaime is right, this is how it is used.

09:06 Jun 1, 2011 

it's a shared drive for a particular purpose.

You might have a shared drive used for storing files permanently where everyone with rights to it can access them. The sort of drive we're talking about here is explicitly not used for permanent storage. With such drives, people providing files typically upload them and inform the recipient where they are. The recipient will generally download them to wherever they need them and delete them from the file exchange drive. If they forget to delete them, the admins will often delete the whole content of the drive at regular intervals.

09:01 Jun 1, 2011 

exactly!

08:57 Jun 1, 2011 

That's your answer then, no?

08:52 Jun 1, 2011 

The IT Dept. says: it is not a disk drive, per se. It's a network share mapped as a drive in Windows and intended to share files on.