Our director of communications bought a Surface last year for meetings. Today she asked me if she can open files on our file server (Windows Server 2012) with her Surface.
From what I’ve read, the surface comes with Windows 10 Home. You can map a network drive with Windows Home but it creates a credential nightmare the next day because it won’t properly disconnect so I don’t tell people it can be done anymore.
I’ve read you can upgrade a surface to windows pro but that you are still locked down to only using apps. If that’s true, I assume you still can’t map a network drive but I can’t find a definitive answer.
Does anyone have experience mapping a network drive with a Surface?
Not sure what you mean by “being locked down to only using apps”. I just upgraded my Surface 6 to Windows 10 Pro. You can use it just like regular Windows. You have to pay the cost of a Win 10 Pro key, but it works as expected after that. Even Windows 10 Home still works as a normal windows machine.
I imagine you could do a NET USE command w/ the appropriate AD credentials or possibly even use Credentials Manager to set up credentials for that particular server. I don’t know that I’d map a drive, but might add a Quick Access link to the share and try storing those credentials instead.
Upgrade it to Win 10 Pro if it isn’t already. That being said, I wouldn’t use an SMB mount for a few reasons: A.) connecting BYOD directly via SMB is just asking for a crypto ransomware incident. B.) It sounds like O365/Sharepoint is what your staff are going to need. C.) You’ll want to force some access policies on BYOD devices via MDM so that they can only access data when they are compliant.
Sounds like @Kpapalia is referring to the Surface Go or the Surface 3 (non-pro) and not the Pro surface devices. That said, any reason they can’t use the RDS farm like everyone else?
I actually have a Surface Pro 4 and I use it like I do any other PC. I connect to our network drives when at the church without any problem. It is running Windows 10 Pro. I have had no problem with connecting with any resource on our server from my Surface.
The bigger issue to me is a policy and procedures issue. You stated, “Our director of communications bought a Surface last year for meetings.” If they bought it personally this is a BYOD situation and I wonder what your church policies are on connecting personal devices to your internal network, storing church data and using church assets on your network. If it was bought using church funds I wonder what your church policies and procedures are around that. Most churches try to avoid having to support a Baskin Robbins 31 flavors of equipment and operating systems.