Map a Drive to a Shared Folder

Network shared resources are great. They allow you to access your information from anywhere on the Local Area Network (LAN). Here’s how to map a drive and make it easier to access the network share. If you work at home from time to time, you may not want to be tied to your home office. Maybe you want to sit out in the backyard, with your laptop, performing your duties via wireless connectivity while you chomp down a Subway sandwich. So sometimes, you have to access documents or other files, but they only exist on your home office desktop machine, or maybe on a server somewhere.

Hmm, what to do. Sneakernet is *so* early nineties. Let’s do it the netgeek way. After you’ve set up a share as described Here, you’ll need an easier way to access that share from other machines on the network.

1. Open the Start Menu and click on the Computer button on the right dark side.
2. Click on the Map network drive toolbar button.
3. Select a drive letter that you want to be assigned to this mapped network drive.
4. Click on the Browse button.
5. Select a listed shared folder on your computer OR a shared network folder that you want to have mapped as a drive, then click on OK.
6. If you want to always have the map network drive available in the Computer window, then check the Reconnect at logon box. If you do not check the Reconnect at logon box, then the mapped network drive in Computer will be disconnected (unmapped) automatically whenever you log off or restart the computer next.
7. If you want to log on to network for the shared network folder with a different user name and password than what you already have set for this network connection, then check the Connect using different credentials box. Normally you would leave this option unchecked unless you wanted to log on as a different user on the network than the default one you already have set up.
8. Click on Finish.
9. If you checked the Connect using different credentials box in step 7, then you will now be prompted to enter the user name and password that you want to use instead to log on to the network with. If you want to be automatically logged on each time you open the mapped network drive, then check the Remember my credentials box. Click on OK after entering them.
10. You will now have a mapped network drive of this shared folder or shared network folder in Computer.

By using this, you can access the shared network resource by using a drive letter, rather than having to remember the long, easily mis-typed UNC path.