Map network drive in XP as a local drive?

[Chris2wire]

Ok... Im trying to defragment some network drives among other tasks, and as always defragment programs only see local drives. (Some network high price programs can defrag a network drive, but it must have an agent installed on the network machine anyways)

Is there anyway to by pass the need to a program that can defrag network drives by simply mapping a network drive in XP to appear as a local drive? I mean actually appear in My Computer under the top section, the "Hard Disk Drives" section, not the bottom section which is the "Network Drives" section.

Is it possible??

Thanks guys... you've helped me a lot.

 

[nweaver]

not that I know of

probably this way because when you defrag a disk, you copy from HDD to memory to a new block on the HDD, doing that across the network increases the chance of corruption and problems. I would use something like psexec from systernals to connect to command.com of the remote system and then run defrag from the command line, or schedule a defrag (that can also be done remotely)

 

[Nothinman]

Is it possible??

No, I'm not too sure as to the implementation and limitations of the defrag APIs but obviously they have to work directly on the filesystem so that probably means they're limited to local access only. When you map a drive over the network all I/O is done via SMB/CIFS and not directly to the filesystem driver.

And since you'll need a local agent on each machine, and thus a license for each machine, why not just schedule the defrag tool to run automatically at night on each machine?

 

[Chris2wire]

Because Windows Defrag is horrible compared to 3rd party defrag programs, including the one we use here... I guess my only option is logging in remotely and running our defrag tool. Better than nothing...

 

[Nothinman]

I guess my only option is logging in remotely and running our defrag tool. Better than nothing...

Or scheduling an automated run of your tool, there is a scheduler in Windows you know, right?

 

[ChronoReverse]

Some 3rd party defraggers (like Perfectdisk) allow you to administer and schedule defrags remotely but you still need it to be installed on the remote machine.

I don't think you have the lower-level access to the disk (through the MS defrag APIs) from over a network share.

 

[Smilin]

Originally posted by: Chris2wire
Because Windows Defrag is horrible compared to 3rd party defrag programs, including the one we use here... I guess my only option is logging in remotely and running our defrag tool. Better than nothing...

Many 3rd party defrag programs are simply GUIs that call on the MS defragging engine (norton). Further more, the MS defragging engine was written by diskkeeper. Sooo.... to say the windows defrag program sucks isn't exactly true It actually works just fine. 3rd party stuff just gets you a pretty interface.

Just use Task Scheduler to schedule defrags if that's what you are after.

There is NO need to log on remotely and kick off a defrag tool...Waste of admin time.