Mapping folder without turning on "Sharing"

Hello everyone,

I'd like to share my music folder on my data drive with another user on the same home network.

My preferable method would be to map the network drive folder on the other user, while keeping "Sharing" off on the folder. This is to prevent other users from accessing the music folder when I join a public network.

When the music folder sharing is enabled under "Advanced Sharing", I have no problems mapping the network drive.

When the music folder sharing is disabled under "Advanced Sharing", I cannot locate the music folder when trying to map the network drive.

Is what I'm asking even possible? Better yet, is there a way to enable sharing for only one specific user?

Thank you in advance.

Not going to happen without sharing enabled.

As to others on a public network gaining access if you have a password set on your system, on your admin users account, they would need to know the username and the password. Also you can designate the public network as a public network and that will auto turn on the firewall restricting all access to your system.

iarehenry said:

Hello everyone,

I'd like to share my music folder on my data drive with another user on the same home network.

My preferable method would be to map the network drive folder on the other user, while keeping "Sharing" off on the folder. This is to prevent other users from accessing the music folder when I join a public network.

When the music folder sharing is enabled under "Advanced Sharing", I have no problems mapping the network drive.

When the music folder sharing is disabled under "Advanced Sharing", I cannot locate the music folder when trying to map the network drive.

Is what I'm asking even possible? Better yet, is there a way to enable sharing for only one specific user?

Thank you in advance.

Sharing won't work unless sharing is enabled. Edward is correct in that if Windows detects you are connected to a Public network then sharing will disabled automatically. You can also turn off sharing by disabling the Network Discovery option in the Advanced sharing settings.

If the other User is using a separate machine running Windows 7 or 8 then you can create a Homegroup then only allow them to join this Homegroup. This will set up a barricade to anyone else in a common Workgroup from gaining access to any shared files or folders.

Only machines in the same Homegroup will have access unless you use the Homegroup style share settings then share the folder with, specific people>Add> Everyone>read/write as required, which will share the folder with everyone in the Workgroup.