Page 950 - Windows 10 May 2019 Update The Missing Manual: The Book That Should Have Been in the Box

GEM IN THE ROUGH SHARING DISKS

You can share files and folders, of course, but also disks.

Sharing an entire disk means every folder on it, and therefore every file,
is available to everyone on the network. If security isn’t a big deal at
your place (because it’s just you and a couple of family members, for
example), this feature can be a time-saving convenience that spares you

the trouble of sharing every new folder you create.

On the other hand, people with privacy concerns generally prefer to
share individual folders. By sharing only a folder or two, you can keep

most of the stuff on your hard drive private, out of view of curious
network comrades. Actually, sharing only a folder or two does them a

favor, too, by making it easier for them to find the files you’ve made
available. This way, they don’t have to root through your entire drive
looking for the folder they actually need.

Note
Technically, there’s yet another kind of sharing: Public-folder sharing. Every PC has a Public
folder. It’s free for anyone on the network to use, like a grocery store bulletin board. Super-
convenient, super-easy.
Yet you should probably skip this method, for two reasons. First, you have to move files into the
Public folder before anyone else can see them; you can’t leave them where they’re sitting, as you
can with the other sharing methods.
Second, in Windows 7 and 8, the Public folders containing your shared files sit inside libraries—
but in Windows 10, Microsoft has hidden away the whole libraries feature. (The main Public
folder still exists—but it’s in your (C:) Users folder.) The bottom line is that even if you share
files by putting them into one of the Public folders, nobody on your network will be able to find
them!

Accessing Shared Folders

Now suppose you’re not you. You’re your co-worker, spouse, or employee.
You’re using your laptop downstairs, and you want access to the stuff that’s