A technique provides an administrative path for accessing a writeable master storage volume in a mirrored storage environment. Illustratively, a writeable master storage volume stores a master set of data addressable by a corresponding pathname, and zero or more read-only (e.g., load-balancing) mirrored storage volumes are configured to store a mirrored set of the master set of data, the mirrored set also addressable by the corresponding pathname. Clients may read data from either the master storage volume or one of the mirrored storage volumes (e.g., according to a configured access location, such as a local mirrored volume if one exists) by issuing read requests having the corresponding pathnames. Also, each client may specifically access the master set of data from the master storage volume by issuing an access (e.g., read/write) request having a specified master storage volume pathname prefix prepended to the corresponding pathname.