Q: My Windows RT device supports an SD card but the music, videos, and pictures on the SD card can't be added to libraries--how can I add them?

A: Windows RT and Windows 8 don't allow you to add a removable drive to a library. Using your new SD card with your Microsoft Surface RT (or any Windows RT device) will result in an error (see screen shot).

Surface RT Error

It's still possible to manually load media from an SD card inside one of the video or audio applications but those files won't be in your library. The reason is that content in the library is indexed to enable fast searching and access and typically it wouldn't make sense to index media on a removable drive, since it could be taken out at any time.

The solution is to create a mount point for the SD card on the C drive of the Windows RT device, instead of using the SD card's drive letter. For example, a mount point would allow the content to be accessed via c:\sd instead of d:\.

This can be achieved from the command line and via the Disk Management tool. From the command line, perform the following:

Create an empty folder on the C: drive called SD:

cd\mkdir sd

Start the diskpart.exe tool (which will prompt you for User Account Control--UAC--approval).
Within diskpart, list the available volumes:

list volume

Your SD card volume will be listed; select the volume that corresponds to your SD card, for example:

select volume 4

Assign a new mount point to that volume:

assign mount=c:\sd

Now exit. The screen shot below shows the commands and output from my example.

 
Windows Rt Diskpart

To use the graphical Disk Management tool, first create an empty sd folder at the root of the C drive using Explorer, then start the tool (diskmgmt.msc from the Run box on the desktop).

Right-click the SD volume and select Change Drive Letter and Paths, click Add in the dialog, and select Browse under Mount in the following empty NTFS folder. Select the SD folder you created. The screenshots below illustrate the steps.

 
Surface RT Disk Management with Change Drive Letter and Paths Selected

Surface RT Disk Management with Browse for Drive Path Dialog Box

This new mount can be used to add to the library (e.g., use c:\sd\video instead of d:\video). (See screen shot below.) To get a quick general background about Surface, see "Top 10: Windows Surface FAQs." Also, check out the latest FAQs from John Savill.

Surface RT Showing Video Folder Added