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Local paths or mapped drives are not allowed in a farm, UNC notation is required

Local paths or mapped drives are not allowed in a farm, UNC notation is required

If you are trying to restore a SharePoint Portal backup and you see this error - and you, like me (big smile) - are new to SPS - then this will drive you nuts!!!

SharePoint does not backup/restore to / from physical drives / paths. You have to setup a share on the server and backup to and restore from a share.

For example, if I have a backup.xml manifest in the C:\SPSBackup folder, and I attempt to restore from this physical path, I receive the error above.

To resolve this, simply share that path on the server (or conversely, create a similar share on the portal you are trying to restore to), and then browse that share. (i.e. \\servername\SPSBackup\backup.xml) and that should resolve this problem for you.

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posted on Friday, December 09, 2005 12:37 PM

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# re: Local paths or mapped drives are not allowed in a farm, UNC notation is required 1/13/2006 5:20 PM TCoates

Very helpful to a new SPS admin. Thanks!

# re: Local paths or mapped drives are not allowed in a farm, UNC notation is required 6/7/2006 10:49 AM satish

create a similar share on the portal you are trying to restore to. What does it mean pl explain in detail
thanks

# re: Local paths or mapped drives are not allowed in a farm, UNC notation is required 6/7/2006 10:53 AM MikeH

Hi Satish...

SharePoint does not allow you to do a backup or restore to a physical drive mapping. It has to be a shared mapping.

Let's say you have a server that you want to use to store multiple documents for your company. You would go to that server and 'share' a folder or drive and set permissions on that share. Then, people in your company to use Windows Explorer, Tools-->Map Network Drive and connect to that share.

In SharePoint, you actually reference a share like that directly, just like the example in my original posting. You cannot reference a driveLetter:\ShareName - but it must be done \\MachineName\ShareName instead - if that makes sense?

# re: Local paths or mapped drives are not allowed in a farm, UNC notation is required 8/4/2006 6:15 PM Phil Guth

This information was very helpful--thanks much

# re: Local paths or mapped drives are not allowed in a farm, UNC notation is required 11/11/2007 12:19 PM David Roberts

Sunday morning, moving sharepoint to a new database server. Bam, get this error.

Thank you, thank you, thank you.

David

# re: Local paths or mapped drives are not allowed in a farm, UNC notation is required 12/28/2007 4:03 AM Ram Narayan

Thanx .....its very helpful 4 me also.