How to Map a Network Drive to OneDrive (and Vice Versa)

Unless you’re a tech-savvy person, you might not know what network drives are and how they’re used. You might be surprised to find out that network drives are still used pretty often, especially in big companies or offices. In this article, let’s dive deep into the usage of network drives and how they can be mapped to OneDrive.

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What is a Network Drive?

A network drive is an external hard drive, which is operated over a particular computer network. Most of the time, they are run over a local area network (LAN). These drives provide data access to all those using the network who have the required authorization credentials.

Such external drives are connected via ethernet cables or USBs. Businesses or offices where multiple users need simultaneous access to files often tend to use network drives for their ease.

If you want to share your data with someone who is not on your network, you might want to move your data to an online cloud storage platform such as OneDrive. If you cannot directly open and upload files to OneDrive from your network drive, in order to map your data, you’ll first have to map it to your device itself.

How to Map Network Drive to OneDrive (Windows 10)?

Doing so is not a hard task, especially if you are using Windows 10.

1. Open Windows File Explorer.
2. Select This PC icon on the left hand side panel. The Map Network Drive icon will not appear if you’re navigating a drive or a folder.
3. Click on Map Network Drive in the Ribbon menu.
4. A new window will pop up. Here, you can select the network drive that you wish to map. These are usually named as alphabets (A-Z). Basically, your selected letter will be the drive associated with your network drive. For instance, a standard drive is associated with drive C.
5. Click on the Browse button and find the actual path of the network drive.
6. Check Connect using different credentials and enter your log-in credentials.
7. Hit the Finish button.

Note: You may encounter an error in Step 5 if the Network Discovery feature is turned off. In such a case, you’ll need to turn it on using the Network and Sharing Center page of the Control Panel.

Now that your network drive is mapped to your Windows device, you can simply upload content to OneDrive manually via drag and drop or with automatic syncing.

How to Map Network Drive to OneDrive (macOS)?

1. Open Finder and navigate to the Go option.
2. Select the “Connect to Server” option.
3. Once a new window pops up, you’ll see a text field for the Server Address. Here, you need to enter “smb://” followed by the ip/destination address of your network drive. 
4. Hit the Connect button.
5. Depending on the settings of your network drive, you might see an additional login window here. 

Once you have logged in, your network drive will be mapped onto your Macbook. Now, you can either upload files to your OneDrive account manually (drag and drop) or with automatic syncing.

How to Map OneDrive to Network Drive?

Apart from mapping network drives to your devices and then to OneDrive, you can also do the opposite and map an online OneDrive to your network drive.

Note: This method will only work for Windows.

1. First, login to your Office 365 account and select OneDrive from the app page that appears after logging in.
2. Select the Return to Classic OneDrive option that you will find towards the bottom left of your sidebar.
3. From the new window’s black toolbar, click on the gear icon (2nd). This will open the Settings options.
4. Select Show Ribbon.
5. Navigate to the Library tab and then select Open with Explorer.
6. In case you see a pop up blocker, you should select “Allow” or “Always Allow for this Site” and then repeat step 5.
7. Now, you will see a File Explorer window with all your OneDrive files. Go to the file path field, right click and select Copy address as text. 
8. Select the Network icon on the left hand side panel, right click on it and then select the Map Network device option.
9. In the new window that opens up, select the drive that you wish to use now. In the Folder field, paste the OneDrive address you copied in Step 5 and then hit the Finish button.

and here you go! With just a few simple steps, you can easily manage to map OneDrive to a network drive.