Mapping Network Drive?

[500Homeruns]

I've been going through different threads and trying to get the setting for my "beginner" set-up dialed in. The question I have is what is "Mapping A Network Drive" and what benefit would it have in a audio system?

 

I have a Windows Vista laptop running JRiver 19 hooked up via USB to the DAC in my Peachtree NovaPre (down in my listening room, aka: basement). My music library is on a WD My Cloud attached to my WD MyNet600 router via Ethernet cable (on the 2nd floor in an office with a Windows 8 PC).

 

Should I use a mapped drive on the WD My Cloud?

[hdls]

"Mapping a network drive" refers to manually "telling" Windows to incorporate a network drive (in your case your WD My Cloud NAS) to Explorer, so that it appears in Explorer (just like any other drive, with a letter e.g. Y drive) and it then gets easier to access / add files etc. Also, depending on the architecture of your home network and the music software you use, mapping your NAS may be necessary for it to function properly (I am using a Windows 8.1 laptop with Foobar2000 playing media from a Synology NAS and in order for it to work I had to map the NAS drive). With Windows 8.1 it's pretty straightforward, if you "see" the drive as part of your home network, right-click on it and a contextual menu telling you how to map it appears (don't know about Vista but surely not that different).

Now: if everything works fine with your current settings, i.e. you can play music, add files to the drive and have it do whatever you need it to do, I wouldn't bother mapping the drive (certainly won't affect sound quality).

[500Homeruns]

Thanks for the explanation!

 

JRiver is able to pull my music library from the WD My Cloud. Everything seems to be working pretty well. So, it looks like I won't have to bother mapping the drive if there isn't any extra benefit.