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Mapping one drive to all SMB shares in Windows 7

smst
Aspirant

Mapping one drive to all SMB shares in Windows 7

Hi all,

 

I'm setting up my brand new RN104 and have got a bit stuck with SMB.

 

I have a bunch of shared folders (including the defaults of Music and Video).  I can access the parent of those shares with \\IPADDRESS in Windows Explorer, but I want to map a drive letter to that (so I can access X:\Music, X:\Video and so on).  The obvious command doesn't work:

 

C:\>net use x: \\192.168.65.6 /user:admin password
System error 53 has occurred.

The network path was not found.

And yet without a drive letter I get a success message and the share shows up in the NET USE table:

 

 

C:\>net use \\192.168.65.6 /user:admin password
The command completed successfully.


C:\>net use
New connections will be remembered.


Status       Local     Remote                    Network

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
OK                     \\192.168.65.6\IPC$       Microsoft Windows Network
The command completed successfully.

It's not much use to me there without a drive letter though, so I took a cue from the NET USE output and tried the IPC$ share explicitly -- again, error 53.

 

Is it not possible to map a drive to the root of all shares in this way?  (I have to be using NET USE unfortunately as I believe it's the only way to give a Windows 7 service admin access to the drive, which I need to do for my backup software to see it.) And am I running into a ReadyNAS problem or a Windows 7 problem?

 

There's an obvious workaround which is to create a single "Share" folder containing "Music", "Video" etc, but that feels somewhat clumsy (and I'd lose per-share access control).

 

Thanks in advance!

 

Cheers,

Steve

 

Message 1 of 13

Accepted Solutions
StephenB
Guru

Re: Mapping one drive to all SMB shares in Windows 7

Try 

net use x: \\192.168.65.6\data /user:admin password

 

View solution in original post

Message 2 of 13

All Replies
StephenB
Guru

Re: Mapping one drive to all SMB shares in Windows 7

Try 

net use x: \\192.168.65.6\data /user:admin password

 

Message 2 of 13
smst
Aspirant

Re: Mapping one drive to all SMB shares in Windows 7

Thanks Stephen, that's perfect. Was I being a bit dense with this one, or is that magic share a bit hidden?

Message 3 of 13
StephenB
Guru

Re: Mapping one drive to all SMB shares in Windows 7

data is the OS6 default volume when you use xraid.  For OS4 it is C.

 

You can browse \\nasname alone from windows file explorer, but you need to specify a share or volume name with the net use command line.

 

Note you can only access the volume if you are using the NAS admin credentials.  With other credentials you need to specify a share.

 

 

So it is a bit hidden.  Netgear intends full volume access to be used for administrative purposes.  If you drag/drop files into the various shares via the mapped drive you will find that the file permissions end up set a bit differently from when you drag/drop into \\nas\sharename directly.  

 

That's not a problem if you use admin credentials consistently, but if you mix admin credentials with user credentials you'll find that users might not be able to edit or delete the files you copied as admin.

 

Message 4 of 13
snstak
Aspirant

Re: Mapping one drive to all SMB shares in Windows 7

In my case it doesn't work, I got message error "System error 67 has occurred. The network name cannot be found"

Message 5 of 13
StephenB
Guru

Re: Mapping one drive to all SMB shares in Windows 7

What NAS are you using (and what firmware is it running)?

Message 6 of 13
snstak
Aspirant

Re: Mapping one drive to all SMB shares in Windows 7

RN102... Windows doesn't see "data" volume, but only shared folder "Videos", etc.

Message 7 of 13
snstak
Aspirant

Re: Mapping one drive to all SMB shares in Windows 7

OS 6.2.5

Message 8 of 13
StephenB
Guru

Re: Mapping one drive to all SMB shares in Windows 7

Are you certain you are using NAS admin credentials?

 

Generally if you aren't seeing the volume, then you aren't.

Message 9 of 13
snstak
Aspirant

Re: Mapping one drive to all SMB shares in Windows 7

What do you mean? I type via Dos shell "net use z:\\ip_address\data /user:admin pswd" and got error message

Message 10 of 13
StephenB
Guru

Re: Mapping one drive to all SMB shares in Windows 7

If "pswd" is the admin password of the NAS then you are using correct credentials.  You could try net use * /delete first just to make sure.

 

Is the volume name on your RN102 "data"?  That is the default, but if you are using flexraid you enter the volume name you want to use.

 

There does need to be a space after the Z: but I suspect that's just a typo in the post.

Message 11 of 13
snstak
Aspirant

Re: Mapping one drive to all SMB shares in Windows 7

Thanks, StephenB, actually I've not type space, stupid, sorry for made a disturbance

Message 12 of 13
smst
Aspirant

Re: Mapping one drive to all SMB shares in Windows 7


@StephenB wrote:

 

So it is a bit hidden.  Netgear intends full volume access to be used for administrative purposes.  If you drag/drop files into the various shares via the mapped drive you will find that the file permissions end up set a bit differently from when you drag/drop into \\nas\sharename directly.  

 

That's not a problem if you use admin credentials consistently, but if you mix admin credentials with user credentials you'll find that users might not be able to edit or delete the files you copied as admin.


That's very useful to remember, thanks.

Message 13 of 13
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