Secure Global Desktop Administration Guide > Applications, documents and hosts > Remapping or hiding Windows 2000/2003 application server drives

Remapping or hiding Windows 2000/2003 application server drives

Problem

You want to let users access their client drives using the same drive letters they use on their client device, for example drive A for the first floppy drive. However, even with the Sun Secure Global Desktop Enhancement Module for Windows installed, these drive letters are in use for application server drives.

Solution

On the Windows 2000/2003 application server, use the Computer Management tools to disable drives A and B, to disable or remap any CD or DVD drives, and to remap hard drives (except the application server boot volume, which can't be remapped).

Case study

Indigo Insurance uses a Windows 2000 application server verona.indigo-insurance.com, on which client drive mapping services are already enabled. Users habitually choose drive A to try to access their floppy drive, but this refers to drive A on the application server, not the client device. You want to make sure that drive A accesses the client drive.

The application server verona currently has the following drives:

Solution

1. Log in to verona.indigo-insurance.com as a user with administrative privileges. To avoid disruption, you should make sure that nobody is currently using this server as an application server (to check, look at the Sessions tab in Object Manager for the host object representing this application server).
2. In Control Panel, open Administrative Tools and then click Computer Management.
3. In the tree, open Storage and then click Disk Management. Using this tool you can change the drive letters used to access some drives.
4. In the Volume List (usually shown at the top of the panel on the right), right-click drive D and choose Change Drive Letter And Path. Click the drive letter, and then click Edit. In the Assign A Drive Letter list, choose the drive letter you want to use to access this drive, for example X. Click OK, and then click Close.
5. In the same way, change the drive letter of the CD drive from E to Y, for example. You can't change the drive letter of the boot volume, in this example drive C.
6. The Disk Management tool doesn't let you change the drive letters to use for floppy drives. To allow use of drive letters A and B to access client drives, you must disable the floppy drives on the application server. On the left side of the Computer Management window, open System Tools and then click Device Manager. Then on the right, open Floppy Disk Drives. Right-click the drive shown, and choose Disable. (Note that if you prefer, you can disable access to a CD or DVD drive rather than change the drive letter used. However, this means you won't be able to install software from that drive unless you temporarily enable it again.)

Next steps

• To ensure consistency for users, you should remap or disable drives on all Windows 2000/2003 application servers used for client drive mapping.
• For information on hiding drives so that users can only access a limited set of drives, see the Microsoft article Using Group Policy Objects to Hide Specified Drives in My Computer for Windows 2000 (Q231289)

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