Question

Running out of Drives for mapping

Asked by: DavidMyers

On the server at school we have several drives mapped out for various purposes, programs and even CDs that I have stored on the hard drive.

We are very close to running out of drive letters. Is there anything I can do when all the letters are used up and yet we still need to map further drives. We only have a small network (around 60 PCs) so I cannot imagine that larger enterprises do not have a requirement for more mapped drives than there are letters in the alphabet.

Please forgive if this is a silly question but I am a science teacher that is being forced into a very rapid learning curve of network management.

Thanks

David

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Asked On
2000-10-12 at 10:48:12ID11535639
Tags

drives

,

mapped

,

more

,

out

,

running

Topic

Miscellaneous Networking

Participating Experts
2
Points
50
Comments
6

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Answers

 

by: mgevansPosted on 2000-10-12 at 11:13:52ID: 4701442

Are you using so many drives so that you can access the data faster? - ie not browse through multiple layers of folders
or because you have so many different locations for the data? -ie 26+ different servers.
or because the programs in use REQUIRE a drive name to access the data?  - ie program cannot use a share name (unc path - \\server\resource)

Most companies I see have about 4-8 drives for the MOST used data (can be gigabytes of data in many layers of folders on different servers) and then let the users browse the network neighborhood to find the rest of the data (you can create as many shortcuts as you like to the \\servername\resource  that way you'll never run out of names).

michael

 

by: stephaniesbPosted on 2000-10-12 at 12:17:19ID: 4702899

You can't go past drive Z in Windows 9x.  Windows 2000 will let you map more drives, but it will mount the drive without assigning a drive letter.  Once you've reached your drive-mapping limit, I would suggest creating shortcuts to the resources.

 

by: mgevansPosted on 2000-10-12 at 12:26:09ID: 4703084

stephaniesb

Welcome to Experts-Exchange. Your high level of skill will contribute greatly here, but there are some guidelines to posting answers and comments that you need to review.

Please do not lock questions as other experts are less likely to add thier comments.  The person posting their question can accept any of our comments as answers.  

Please use this opportinity to change your proposed answer to a comment.

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thanks!
michael

 

by: DavidMyersPosted on 2000-10-13 at 12:47:46ID: 4722889

I know some CDs will work over a network from a network server but In order to get some CDs working (particularly those that ask for the CD in the drive) I was assuming that each required an individual mapping.

Is this not the case?

David

 

by: stephaniesbPosted on 2000-10-13 at 17:20:01ID: 4725726

You should temporarily map the drives when you do this.  Just clear the box next to "reconnect at logon".  This will map the drive until you reboot the pc (or right-click on the drive and choose 'disconnect').  Then the drive letter will be free the next time you need to map a drive.

 

by: DavidMyersPosted on 2000-10-14 at 12:06:47ID: 4731985

Thanks - I will try it.

David

20120131-EE-VQP-002

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