Mapping a Network Drive?

[ucfswimmer]

What are the advantages and disadvantages in doing this in a peer-to-peer network or in a client/server network?

Why would you do this?

Thanks!

~jeff~

 

[engjohn]

makes it easier for non-techie users to access data on another computer... As a matter of fact most do not even know it is on another computer.
Also, some applications like Quickbooks like the data to be on a mapped drive.

Yet again quicker to access files on other systems...

Programs that do not support saving to a network location can be tricked by mapped drives..

The list goes on and on...

 

[Ridenow]

One of the things we do where I work is give all the users a mapped drive on a server. We have it setup so they save all their work onto this share. Then every night we do a backup of the server. When some idiot deletes what they have been working on for days we can give them yesterday's copy.

I have shipping software set up on a mapped drive. This lets me give some coworkers access to print shipping labels. Same thing with an asset database.

Very useful feature.

 

[Kingslayer]

File sharing and file management is the most common reason. You can manage security on seperate folders (user1 can't access user3's folder). You can make things easier to back up. It's a common point of access instead of everyone having the file on their desktops risking corruption and mishaps.

You can write scripts to map these drives automatically upon boot. We take it one level higher and use profiles. The profiles load a bat file with the scripts in them. Certain profiles have certain shared drives (actually folders on the server, but show up as drives on the client machines). Level 1 employees dont have Level 2 employees drives mapped.

 

[DDR-PIII]

why not do it ? the only reason that I wouldnt do this is if i had a slow LAN, but thats not the problem.

 

[su root]

Also, it's cheaper to give 3Gigs or so to the workstations (where only program files and OS are to be kept), and put all the storage money into the server storage. At the server, you can easily organize redundancy and backup configurations.