WHY WOULD YOU "MAP NETWORK DRIVE

[Umma Gumma]

I tried to send this before. It didn't make it.

I've done a lot of searching...on the web...on Microsoft's News
Server...and
I can't find the basic answer. WHY WOULD YOU "MAP NETWORK DRIVE"? (Be nice,
I'm a newbee. You don't learn unless you ask, right?)

I have a small home network of two computers. I use Netscan to access a
Windows 98SE box (a very old machine that still whizzes but is incapable of
running the newer programs). I use it for storage and fun stuff. Keeps my
XP
cleaner. In Netscan there's an option to "Map Network Drive".... Anxious to
click it just in case it screws up a perfectly good, working connection.
But
I can't find the answer to this basic question. Is it speed? Is it access?

 

[Leonard Grey]

Mapping a network drive means assigning the network drive a drive letter
on your computer, as if it were a hard drive installed on your computer.
Thereafter, to access the network drive you double-click on the drive
icon. It's a convenient way to access a network drive.

You'll find plenty of details here, likely more than you really want to
know ;-)
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=mapping+a+network+drive

 

[Umma Gumma]

Mine is a lowly computer sitting in the corner of the room. I take it I
could do the same thing, but it wouldn't respond if the power were turned
off. If I map the drive on the other (older, 386) I won't have to use
Netscan?

Thanks for the reading material. I DID do that same search and have it saved
to disk as a shortcut. Sometimes however it's so much better asking someone
directly. How else does one learn, eh?

 

[Leonard Grey]

I don't know anything about Netscan.

If you power off a computer that has a drive that is mapped to your
computer, you will get an error message when you try to access the
network drive from your computer.

 

[Umma Gumma]

I've been using Netscan, a freeware utility to access the computer. I've
read up. I'll map the drive. Maybe the entire thing. Thank you very much
again.

 

[Lady Dungeness]

One thing to think about is, the computer likes to access all the
network drives when it starts up and when you save a file. So the
more drives there are in the network map, the slower it will be.

I found this out when I got fancy at school and mapped the network --
I have about 20 drives in there, some with interesting things on them
-- but my computer took almost 10 minutes to boot and 2-3 minutes just
to present a save dialog box.

Since I only access two network devices, I unmapped the network. Now
my computer is very fast. It's easy for me to use command lines to
access the networked devices I want. There's only two of them.

Lady D

 

[Umma Gumma]

Duly noted with thanks. There's only one little drive I'm mapping so I
shouldn't have a problem. If I do then I'll unmap it. It's only 5.2 Gig.
Using Netscan to access and then Explorer to transfer files even the big
files just fly there.

 

[Leonard Grey]

Glad I could help.

 

[cquirke (MVP Windows shell/user)]

On Sun, 24 Jun 2007 16:15:07 -0700, "Umma Gumma"

WHY WOULD YOU "MAP NETWORK DRIVE"?

File and Print Sharing allows one to read (or read and write) files
that are on other computers, via the network.

The syntax ("grammer") required to do that wasn't supported by older
software when these things were developed, i.e. a program expecting
only "C:\Some\Dir\Path\Filename.exe" would not be able to handle
"\\OtherPC\Some\Dir\Path\Filename.exe"

So as a workaround, the OS allowed drive letters to be mapped to
network paths, so that "\\OtherPC\Some\Dir\Path\Filename.exe" could
also be accessed as "F:\OtherPC\Some\Dir\Path\Filename.exe" as if F:
was a local drive letter on the PC you were working from.

Nowdays, that need has largely fallen away, but some folks still like
the convenience of mapping drive letters to network shares.


If you are not on a network, none of this applies to you.

If you are on a network, then you should be careful what you share,
and especially what you allow to be written to via the network. The
common practice of full-sharing the whole of C: allows malware to
enter the PC and set itself up to be active there!

In the above situation, mapping the share to a drive letter makes it
even easier for malware (that only "knows" drive letter rather than
\\PCname syntax) to infect the PC sharing C: in this way.

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