Hi,

Need some networking advice with windows 7.
We are moving in to a new office and need to network 4 windows 7 pc' s together.

Am i write to presume a work group would be fine for this instance? We basically want to share a partitioned drive on my PC.

The aim is the partition to hold this information and a few executable programs for the other 3 computers to use.

What i don't know is how to share a whole drive with others on the work group? Is this done by mapping the drive?

Any help appreciated.

Yes you should just be able to map the drive on each machine.

might we worth using the add network locations options (by right clicking in a clear area of my computer) rather than the traditional map "network drive option" as this seems to cause fewer issues.

You might want to consider a NAS instead as it may slow your PC down, especially if the partion to be shared is on the same physical drive as your main os partition.

^ Id second the NAS idea, just something simple like an HP Proliant microserver would be a better idea than hosting stuff from your workstation.

Would I need dedicated nas software or utilise windows? We have spare pcs we can use solely for this instance and just hook it up in the corner of the office somewhere.
Some off the software is required to run from a dedicated drive letter so as long as I can partition off to drive letter f: for a coupe hundred gb I will be fine.
I haven't ever setup a nas machine yet.

You can use windows just as you were plannig to only its just not your machine.

The drive letter assigned on the host conputer is largely irrelevant. Its the drive letter assignment on the local machine that matters.

Do you need any sort of data protection/backup? For either the workstations or the shared data?