You can assign a drive letter to a shared folder. This gives you an easier way to access a shared folder. So, instead of browsing thru My Network Places, your shared folder will be accessible as F:, for example. To do that, open My Computer, Tools, Map Network Drive.

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Figure 9: Path to assign a drive letter to a network shared folder.

On the window that will show up, you can choose the drive letter and the shared folder to assign to that drive letter. In our case, we assigned our Shared_Data folder to Z: drive, so this folder will be accessed as drive Z: on our computer. You can also check the “Reconnect at logon” box if you want this assignment to be reestablished when you restart your computer.

Figure 10: Assigning a drive letter to a network shared folder.

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Figure 11: Now our shared folder can be accessed as Z:.

If you want to break the drive letter assignment in the future, just right click the drive on My Computer and choose Disconnect from the menu that will show up.