Sharing and Hiding your Files and Folders

Sharing drives and folders across your network is easy. Not sharing them is just as easy. If certain drives or folder are sensitive not selecting to share them will prevent them from appearing on other computers connected to the network. This is a simple step but many people just share an entire drive and so all of the information is available to all users of the network.

Setting up File Sharing

To change your drive or folder sharing setting simply open my computer and right click on the drive or folder you wish to modify. You should be faced with a menu similar to the one on the left. Now select sharing and security from the drop down menu. This will alter the settings of the entire drive if a drive is selected. And if a folder is selected you will be altering the properties of the folder and its sub folders.

Once you have selected Sharing and Security from the menu you will be presented with the sharing and security properties box. The top section entitled Local Sharing and security is aimed at sharing files and folders between users of the same computer if you have more than one user setup on your machine.

What we are interested in here is the Network sharing and security section below.  The first check box says share this folder on the network. This is the main box as regards to sharing the resource on the network. If the box is checked this folder will be shared on the network. The share name is simple. Whatever you type in this box will be how the resource is named on other computers. Use this box to save confusion with many computers on the network. You don't want all the drives to be called "C" or you wouldn't know which computer they were from.

The final checkbox is a powerful setting. Even though the resource is shared on the network the final check box must be checked in order for other computers to alter the files stores on this machine. You can allow people to read your files but not alter them. This is useful for information files that you don't want altering by other users.

Sharing and hiding your folders

It is possible to share a folder on the network but hide it from public view at the same time. This allows you to access some folder and files that may contain important data without broadcasting the fact that it is available over the network. Its like password protecting your folder but the password is the folder itself.

To hide a certain folder from view do exactly the same as you would to set the sharing and security normally. The difference is when you name the folder in the Share name box you need to add a dollar sign to the end of the name. A normal folder may be called finances for example. To hide this folder but still share it you need have the Share this folder on the network box checked but name the folder finances$.

To access this folder over the network you need to click on the start button and select "run" from the prompt type the following without the brackets and with the relevant names

\\(name of remote computer)\(sharename$)

then press enter. If the network computer and folder exists it will be displayed to you. Without knowing the name of the resource you would not be able to access it.

Next - Personal Firewalls

External Articles

Managing network Shares - PCStats
Network Sharing in Windows XP - Microsoft