Windows – WDS and WSUS can not use SMB Shares

server-message-blockwdswindowswindows-server-2012wsus

I have a WS2012R2 machine with several hard drive setup formatted as NTFS. When I create a share and map that share on a virtual machine where WDS and WSUS are running as drive, on service configuration they do not see that mapped drive letter.

Are these services not able to use shares? If I create a virtual iSCSI drive and connect to that and create a NTFS drive from within the disk manager I can then use those drives.

Best Answer

No. Mapped drives live in the user space, so only applications and services that run as that user (usually interactive with the desktop) can see those mapped drives.

There's two options here. One good, one terrible.

The good one

Use a UNC path to access the share.

The bad one

You could psexec into the system account and net use to mount the drive in the system account. But this is really bad. Don't do this.

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