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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.

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 7/18/2006 9:25 PM Harini
Excellent!

# 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.

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