How to link a network drive into a folder on Windows 7

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How to link a network drive into a folder on Windows 7

Have you ever tried to install a software on a network drive or use a network drive as data directory

were the software installer checks for the drive type and refuses the installation on network drives?

A workaround that helped me in these cases is to use a symlink on Windows.

For example, the application wants to put its data in the path C:\ProgramData\appname

but you want the data to be stored on the mapped network drive X:\mydata\appname,

you can use the following command on the windows commandline to symlink the directorie:

mklink /d "C:\ProgramData\appname" "X:\mydata\appname"

The benefit is, that the application installer detects now C: as valid local harddrive and uses the symlinked path to store its data on the network drive X:\mydata\appname.

The general syntax for the mklink command is:

mklink /d symlinkpath targetdirectory