HIT: TECH: Drive Mapping

[Terri Lent <Tlent@AOL.COM>]

I know it's been a while since I requested your help but THANK YOU!  As I
wrote, I was trying to find out what to do when we run out of drive letters
for cd-rom programs that have to run from a root letter (whether their on
cd-rom or copied to a file server).  Lots of different options are available
to fix this problem.  My network engineer should know better than to tell me
"you can't do that"!

Thanks again!

Terri

My computer geek husband (he knows I am calling him
this) said that somehow you can logically combine the
drives.  He also suggested stop using Novell and use
WindowsNT.  He said that with Novell you only have
drives F-Z, but with WindowsNT you can name your
drives and you can logically have an unlimited number
of drives.
--------------
We're running an NT network and set up a batch file for each of the
programs that need to be mapped.  The batch file maps and UNMAPS the
program when you exit.  This way the same letter can be used any number of
times (just not at the same time).  I hope that helps.  If you need an
example, tell me and I'll try to copy it from school (I do my listserv
stuff at home)
------------------

We had this exact problem.  There are a couple of solutions.  The one we
opted for was to ditch the tower concept and buy a Boffin CD server.  It has
a CD and DVD drive and CD's are downloaded to its huge hard drive (25 gigs).
Most CD's then are recognized as being one drive letter.  A few older one's
still needed a drive letter assigned, but only 3 in our collection.  Another
tactic would be to get more CD's as on-line services.
-------------------------
There are at least 2 opssibilities open to you.  Netware supports
some of the punctuation marks, I forget which ones, as drive
"letters" giving about 10 more than the 26.

But the method I used when this was a real situation for me was to
run all CDs from the same "letter", and do a mapping as part of a
batch file in starting every application.  I had Netware then, which
mapped, by default, search drives backwards from Z.  I elected to use
"R" as my Rom drive, and mapped it as part of the startup.

Your tech support people should be able to do this with no trouble,
with Netware or NT (assuming Microsoft OS clients; I don't know about
Macs or *nix clients).

I think the syntax, assuming R, would be

NET USE R: /DELETE /YES
NET USE R: \\MediaServer\CDDrive4 /YES
application_name
-----------------
If you're writing about mapping to the users machines, then you'll
probably need to go to some sort of menuing program that will map
and unmap databases as they are needed. Even if the cdrom
programs demand to be set up to run in set drive letters, you could
still do this, since I wouldn't think that a person would be
accessing more than one cdrom program at a time. If it's a problem
on the network itself, then I'm out of my depth.

Do you know about the CDROMLAN discussion list? It's fairly
quiet, but the experts are all still there, and the archives may hold
the solutions you need, since it was very active a couple of years
ago and I remember similar questions.

To subscribe send the message to:
listserv@listserv.boisestate.edu

in the body of the message put
subscribe your name

don't add a sig and send it.
-------------------------
One solution would be to use software which caches CD-ROMs to a hard
drive... I forget the company name, but this software lets you copy the
CD-ROM onto the hard drive and then launch it through the software... runs
much faster and you don't have little hands handling CD-ROMs.
-------------------------
Sounds like you need a second server.  You didn't say what platform you are
running, but we have hundreds of computers in our district that were
originally mapped to 2 different servers.  Recently one of those crashed and
the tech dept. bought a HUGE server and they have just "partioned" it to
handle different categories of information.
---------------------------
do you have a cd-rom tower? mine holds 7 cds, but you can get them to hold
14+
-------------------------


Terri Lent, Librarian
Manassas Park HS
Manassas Park, Va.
tlent@aol.com

You may have tangible wealth untold;
Caskets of jewels and coffers of gold.
Richer than I you can never be
I had a mother who read to me.--Strickland Gillilan

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