Mapping a Network Drive

If you store files in shared folders on other networked computers (aka network folders), at some point you're likely to want an application that you run locally to access those files. Some applications can easily deal with network folders, accessing them by their Uniform Naming Convention (UNC) share names. You enter such share names by using the syntax \ComputerNameFolderShareName. So, if you stored files in a shared folder named Data that is on a computer named Kafka, you would tell an application that needs those files to look in \kafkadata.

However, some applications can't use UNC share names. You can fool these applications by using mapping to have Windows 2000 (Win2K) present a network folder as a local, logical drive. For example, if you map \kafkadata to logical drive G, when your application saves a file to drive G, the application is actually saving the file to \kafkadata.

To map a network folder to a local drive, open My Computer. From the Tools menu, select Map Network Drive. When the wizard asks for a local drive name, specify an unused drive name. For example, if you've partitioned your hard disk into C and D drives and specified F as your CD-ROM drive, you might choose G. Then, specify the UNC share name of the shared folder you want to map to the G drive.