Donald in Fairfax, Virginia asks:
“A co-worker suggested that I map my network drive. What does this mean and where do I begin?”
Donald, this is a quick and easy task and I’m happy to walk you through it.
A network drive is commonly a file folder located on a remote computer that has been configured for sharing over a LAN. This can also be an entire hard drive that is shared. There may be hundreds of network drives, so instead of searching a long list every time you need one in particular, you can ‘Map’ it. This action instructs your machine to connect to the mapped drive when you log in. When you go to save a file, this drive will appear in the drop down list as one of the places you can save it to, so you can quickly select that option.
There are different steps to accomplish this depending on the type of computer you have; PC or Mac. So I have provided instructions for both.
To map from Windows:
- Open Windows Explorer or My Computer from the Windows Start menu
- From the Tools menu, click Map Network Drive
- In the Map Network Drive window that opens, choose any available letter from the drop down list
- In the Folder box, type the path of the folder or computer or click Browse to find what you need
- Click the Reconnect at login checkbox if this network drive should be mapped permanently. If this box is not checked, this drive will un-map when the user logs out
- Click “Finish”
Mapping Network Drives on Mac OS X:
- On the menu bar, click Go > Connect to Server
- Enter the address of the desired server starting with smb://; (i.e. smb://www.domain.com/foldername)
- You will then be prompted for a username and password
- After you have entered username and password, Click OK
If you entered everything correctly, you should see an icon on your desktop that looks like this:
- That is your mapped network drive
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