Map local drive to remote desktop

”“”This article shows necessary actions for mounting a network drive with administrator rights.

If you have a local network set up at home or at work between devices, you have access to a shared folder on another computer, and also if you have a network drive [NAS], or a USB drive is connected to the router, then in Windows 10 can be connected as a network drive. In this article we will look at this process on the example of Windows 10. But in other versions of Windows there are almost no differences.

By connecting a network drive, we can quickly access a specific network folder. All network drives are displayed in the explorer [this computer]. Of course, to connect a shared folder as a separate drive, our computer must find these shared folders. Simply put, in the explorer, on the Network tab, we should have access to folders on other computers on the network, to a network drive, or a router [if a USB flash drive or disk is connected to it].

If you have devices there, then you can connect their shared folders as a network drive. If they are not, or not only the necessary computers, or drives, then it is possible that you need to configure the local network.

1. Create a New Admin User [Type From the Command Line]

“Net user” + username + “” + password + “/ add” [for example: net user pcunlocker 123 / add] — create the user “pcunlocker” with the password “123”

“net localgroup” + group_name + “” + username + “/ add” [for example: net localgroup administrators pcunlocker / add] — the user “pcunlocker” becomes the administrator

• The best way is through Sharing, within Properties. Share with Everyone [Full Control], then control permissions through the Security tab [NTFS permissions]. 

• Like redirected drives?

  You can redirect his local drive to the server and it will show up as a disk in file explorer. No need to map anything. 

  Is the user connecting from a different network, like over the internet?

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• But what you really want to do is map a folder for best practices. You can provide credentials over the entire drive, but sharing folders is typically a better way of doing things. Here's how you would setup a mapped drive, following the sharing/permissions I already told you about... //www.it.cornell.edu/services/guides/computer/howto/map_win7.cfm

  Also, don't give a single user permissions. You give groups permissions. That's because if someone leaves the company, you don't have to remove their SID from folders ACLs. You can just delete them from the group in AD, and it cleans everything up on sharing/folder permissions.

  So even if this person is the only person needing access, create a security group in AD [if you're employing AD], then give that group the access needed on the share for that drive.

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• You might ask [after reading about sharing a folder, not a drive], is "well can I still serve up the whole drive, instead of a folder?" No, you cannot. Here's an article validating that. //superuser.com/questions/506360/mapping-an-entire-network-drive-not-a-folder

  The $ after the drive, means its a hidden administrative share. Which means you need admin privileges to access the drive remotely. I would advise against that. Create a folder, put whatever you need in there, assign a security group to the folder after it is shared to Everyone > Full Control. Put the user in that group, then map the folder to their computer [check the box to Reconnect at Logon].

• You don't need to map a drive, when the user connects to RDP before they do so is an show options box, then under local resources, you can choose C or whatever letter of his machine you want to be visible in the RDP sessions.

  I would only do this if the user is on the LAN/VPN and not over the internet.

  But why not simplify things and give the user a home drive that appears both local and in RDP so they can see it both ways
  

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• what is the user trying to do? under the options of the RDP connection, you can map the local drives of the pc to the server session and copy files , from/to that way

• Sorry I should have been more clear. Yes, what I want to do is map a folder on the remote server not an entire drive. I can accomplish that if I setup a VPN connection, in which case I can then see the folders I want to map, but I don't want to do that because it is super slow and not reliable with QuickBooks.  I want to be able to map a folder on the remote server as if it were a drive on my client [local] machine.

  Sorry for the confusion.

• britv8 wrote:

  what is the user trying to do? under the options of the RDP connection, you can map the local drives of the pc to the server session and copy files , from/to that way

  I want to do the reverse. Map a remote folder on the server to my local machine.

• robertpeets wrote:

  I want to do the reverse. Map a remote folder on the server to my local machine.

  So connect the laptop to the VPN and add the shared drive on the server to the local computer either with the IP address or servername.

• Welcome to the community as well!!

• Actually I am trying to avoid using a VPN. QuickBooks doesn't play well with VPN's.  My goal is to get the remote user to update their QB POS to their QB Enterprise which is on the remote server. Thanks.

• If you don't want to use a VPN you could setup WebDAV on the server and share out the folder over an HTTPS tunnel.   Not sure how well it would work with QB files though--you might run into similar issues as accessing with a VPN.

• Justin1250 wrote:

  Like redirected drives?

  You can redirect his local drive to the server and it will show up as a disk in file explorer. No need to map anything. 

  Is the user connecting from a different network, like over the internet?

  Actually I am trying to do the reverse of that. Map the server folder to the local drive. They are using RDP over an internet connection as well.

• VPN/HTTPS is the "only option" you are wanting to transfer data from server to PC. This will "always" be slow.

• Did anybody solve this issue? I can only use file copy/paste from local drive to the rdp serverdrives, I would like to get som sort of UNC path, or map a letter: I am using Cisco VPN, and the normal filesharing port is blocked.