A mapped drive letter is the way of associating a letter assignment with either a shared a shared folder on another computer (its most common usage) or even on the local machine.  When a drive is mapped, GoldMine or the user can read and write files by accessing that drive letter, just as if that drive represented a local physical hard disk drive on the workstation or server.
 
Consider the following:
 

The server GMSERVER has a folder called Apps on the C:\ drive.  It is shared as Apps.  Therefore, to access the folder from the network, a user would type \\GMSERVER\Apps in the address bar of a window.  Since the Apps folder is shared, it can be mapped as a drive letter.  For this example, we will assume that \\GMSERVER\Apps is mapped to the G:\ drive letter on a users computer.

 

Any folder under \\GMSERVER\Apps (Quickbooks, GoldMine or any other application) is seen from the workstation on the G:\ Drive instead of on the Apps folder on \\GMSERVER.  However, the locations are the same.  So if a user types either \\GMSERVER\Apps\GoldMine or G:\GoldMine in the address bar of a window, they will be taken to the same location.
 
The important thing to remember with mapped drive letters is that they are specific to a given user and are usually assigned through a login script or manually assigned in Windows.  Service accounts or the Local System account cannot access mapped drive letters.  Any service using the Local System account should use the local path (in this example, C:\Apps) in place of the mapped drive letter.  Any service using a service account can use either the local path (in this example, C:\Apps) or the UNC path (in this example,\\GMSERVER\Apps) in place of the mapped drive letter.

 

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