How To Share The Wisdom
Newcastle Herald
Monday September 22, 2003
Q: I have set up a small computer network in my office. I know it must be possible to share files and printers. How can I do this?
A: You're entirely right! What you want to do is make what is called a ``share". As the name suggests, this allows you to share data and resources.
Browse your list of printers or your file system using Windows Explorer.
Identify the printer or directory that you wish to share. Right-click on it and from the menu which pops up, select Sharing.
A window will be displayed, which allows you to enable the resource to be shared across the network. You can also specify the level of access you are granting.
This means you can allow people lesser or greater access to your shared resource. For example, you can specify that others on the network can only read your shared files. This means they cannot change or delete anything.
You can also allow others full access, which means they can make modifications and add new files.
If you are using Windows NT or Windows 2000 you can also provide much more fine tuning, down to individual users. So, some users or groups of users can perhaps only read the contents of the share, whereas others may be able to make changes.
That's all there is to setting up the shared resource in the first instance.
From a client machine, however, you will need to set up a connection to the share. You can do this in two ways. The first is to browse your network.
Double-click on the computer with the shared resource and you will see the shares it has available. You can then open any of these and work with them as though they were local hard drives on your PC.
Secondly, from Windows Explorer, you can select the Tools/Map Network Drive menu. This allows you to map a shared drive, so that it correlates to a drive letter on your computer. You can tell Windows if you want the mapping to last for just your current session or if it should be permanent. If you choose a permanent mapping, Windows will re-map the drive letter to the shared resource every time you start the computer.
One final note shares can be kept secret so that casual browsers cannot see them. All you need to do is name the share so that it ends with the dollar symbol ($). For example, Finance$. Any share named like this will not be visible when browsing the network. However, users can still connect to it if they know its name and enter this explicitly when mapping a drive.
David Williams is the National I.T. Manager for Advantage Personnel. Send your questions to dwilliams@advantagepersonnel.com.au. Not all correspondence can receive a reply.
© 2003 Newcastle Herald
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