Windows 7 : Using a Windows Network - Network Power User Topics (part 2) - Mapping Drive Letters

Mapping Drive Letters

If you frequently use the same shared network folder, you can make it a “permanent houseguest” of your computer by mapping the network folder to an unused drive letter on your computer—one of the letters after your hard drive’s usual C: and the CD-ROM drive’s usual D:. You can give the shared folder \\server\shared the drive letter X:, for example, so that it appears that your computer has a new disk drive X:, whose contents are those of the shared folder.

Mapping gives you several benefits:

• The mapped drive appears along with your computer’s other real, physical drives in the Computer view for quick browsing, opening, and saving of files.

• Access to the shared folder is faster because Windows maintains an open connection to the sharing computer.

• MS-DOS applications can use the shared folder through its assigned letter. Most legacy DOS applications can’t accept UNC-formatted names such as \\server\shared\subfolder\file, but they can use a path such as I:\subfolder\file.

• If you need to, you can map a shared folder using an alternative username and password to gain access rights that you might not have with your current Windows login name.

To map a drive, follow these steps:

1.	Open any Windows Explorer window. Press and release the Alt key to display the menu. Then click Tools, Map Network Drive.
2.	Select an unused drive letter from the drop-down list, as shown in Figure 1. If possible, pick a drive letter that has some association for you with the resource you’ll be using: E for Editorial, S for Sales—whatever makes sense to you. Figure 1. You can select any unused drive letter to use for the drive mapping.
3.	Select the name of the shared folder you want to assign to the drive letter. You can type the UNC-formatted name, if you know it already—for example, \\servername\sharename. Alternatively, you can click Browse to poke through your network’s resources and select the shared folder. Find and select the desired shared folder, then click OK.
4.	You have two options: If you want this mapping to reappear every time you log in, check Reconnect at Logon. If you don’t check this box, the mapping will disappear when you log off. If your current Windows username and password don’t give you sufficient permissions to use the shared resource, or if your username won’t be recognized at the other computer because your account name is different there, select Connect Using a Different Username. (This works only if usernames are actually used on the networked computer. If it always grants access via the Guest account, it doesn’t matter what account information you supply.) Note You must use the same username for all connections to a given computer. If you have other drive letters already mapped to the other computer with your original username, you have to unmap those drives before you can make a drive mapping with a different username.
5.	Click Finish.
6.	If you selected Connect Using a Different Username, Windows will display a prompt for a username and password. Enter them, then click OK.

After you map a drive letter, the drive appears in your Computer list along with your local disk drives. You might notice a couple of funny things with these drives:

• If you haven’t accessed the network drive for 20 minutes or so, it might turn gray, indicating that the network connection to the remote computer has been disconnected. When you use the drive again, it will reconnect and turn black.

• If the remote computer (or you) really goes offline, a red X appears through the drive.

Mapping a Drive to a Subfolder

When you’re setting up a mapped drive and you browse to find a shared folder, you may notice that Windows lets you delve into the shared folders themselves. If you drill down into a subfolder and select it as the location to use in mapping a drive letter, you’ll find that the mapped drive starts at the subfolder. That is, the subfolder becomes the mapped drive’s “root directory,” and you can’t explore upward into the shared folder that contains it. You can map a drive letter to a subfolder using the GUI method described in the preceding section, or using the net use command-line utility described later.

Mapping a subfolder can be a good thing because it makes any program that uses the mapped drive letter see just that subfolder as the drive’s root directory.