mapped drive vs. UNC

[Larry]

What is the difference between a mapped drive and using
UNC? Is there a performance or efficeincy difference. I
have always tried to use UNC just because you can get a
lot of mapped drives and it gets confusing and cluttered.
When I map a drive am I sending the entire contents of
that drive location on the server across the network? Or
are we just dealing with references to theses locations?
Any insight on this would help me out, thanks a lot.

 

[Rob Schneider]

What is the difference between a mapped drive and using
UNC? Is there a performance or efficeincy difference. I
have always tried to use UNC just because you can get a
lot of mapped drives and it gets confusing and cluttered.
When I map a drive am I sending the entire contents of
that drive location on the server across the network? Or
are we just dealing with references to theses locations?
Any insight on this would help me out, thanks a lot.

I don't recall hearing that there are any performance differences. I
think the two reasons exist for a lot of reasons ... mainly historical
and people. Either way re just references and information only moves
when requested, e.g. open a folder, it loads the folder at that time;
you load the file, it loads the file at that time.

- many people like letters on drives, and when networking started with
Novell the word "map" for mapping drives emerged. Like or not, people
learn that certain letters mean certain things, e.g. h: has emerged as
the "home" folder on the lan server.

- in the early days, applications didn't understand UNC specifications.
they expected a mapped drive letter.

- using mapped letters allows for easy indirection of server resources,
e.g. the \\server\share name can change, but the h: drive can stay
fixed. Thus, behind the scenes the you can change the specific
\\server\share without disrupting the user or the application

- there are only so many letters available for mapping, so it's good to
use UNC's when it makes sense

- drive letters make it possible to do commands in the command prompt
box more easily.

- dos and windows didn't have the concept of symbolic links as in Unix,
so the drive letter and unc combination were a next best way of
achieving same.

- etc.