windows – How to Mount Network Drive as Physical Drive

hard drivemountnetwork-sharewindows

Is there a way to mount a network location so that it appears as a local physical disk? e.g. \\computer\share as D: (not a network drive)

Best Answer

As I said on this (almost) identical question:

Are you sure this is really what you want to do? There's a very good article on why this is a bad bad bad idea over at Joel on Software (see point #3)...

The concluding statement is:

Conclusion: the next time someone tries to sell you a programming product that lets you access network resources the same was as you access local resources, run full speed in the opposite direction.

If you want to know why, read the relevant parts of the article.

And the short answer to your question is: No. Not easilly, and the reason is that a local disk is expected to have all sorts of functionality that a network share does not. A local disk expects a local file system (NTFS/FAT/etc), which a network share does not have (Well, it does, but at the server it's hosted on, not your location), as well as a whole host of other features that just can't be safely or reliably replicated (see the linked artical).

Related Topic