Tutorial: Mapping Network Drives

[Layzie Bone]

I suppose this can vary depending on your network setup. However it can be done with any router and two or more computers.

Everycomputer that runs Windows has a name, like Mike's Computer or something, Windows also uses this for the hostname. So instead of refering your computer as 162.255.255.169 you can refer it to MIKES_COMP at the command line. You can do virtually anything you want FTP, or run a server depending on the use intended.

To map an entire hard drive or just a folder you need to make it shared. Right click the folder or drive and choose propeties, click on Sharing, check the box that enables other network computers to gain access to the folder's contents, and choose allow other users to change my files, if you want. Not choosing this will make the folder read-only.

After you do this on all the computers and set all drives and/or folders to shared. Go into any windows explorer location, My Computer will work fine. Click on Tools choose Map Network Drive... Then choose Browse, it should show mshome, and it should be expandable, that I mean you should see [+] to the left. Expand it until you see the location on another computer you want to make the network drive out of.

Sometimes I have trouble getting things to show up, Norton will block a lot of stuff, so turn it off if you're having trouble. The other way is to do this: Instead of clicking on Browse, click on "Sign Up for Online Storage or Connect to A Network Server." Then choose "Choose another Network Location." Then type the computer and the drive or folder loaction. Here is an example:

\\WINREJECTS_SERV\C

you can subsitute the IP address of the computer instead of the hostname. Do not use the "\\" prefix if you're using an IP address.

Any questions, problems, or if I got something wrong. Let me know. This is intended for people using Windows XP.

[Grinch]

You can use \\ when using an IP address to map a network drive. I just tried it. So you can use for example \\10.10.10.5\Pirated_Movies

[nesman]

Nice article, Wannabe.

We used to do this a lot at work. Usually, we'd do it with the ip address because host names are a little funny in Windows.

At home I like to keep my hosts file updated with names and ip addresses. It's great until the power goes out and my machines play musical ip addresses. I'm working on setting up static ip's now so the dhcp shuffle doesn't make me cuss as much next time.