When a user launches a session, XenApp tries to map disk drives on the server to the typical drive letters for the client device.
If the drive letters are available, the server maps the client’s
- first floppy disk drive to A,
- the second floppy drive to B,
- the first hard disk drive to C, and so on.
However, a server cannot map client device drives to letters that are assigned to the server’s own disk drives.
- Client drives that use the same letters as the server’s drives are assigned different drive letters, starting with V and going backward through the alphabet.
- If client drive letters do not conflict with the server’s drive letters, the original letters for the client drives are used.
- Server floppy disk drives are not available to client users, so the drive letters for floppy disk drives specified on the client devices are used. Non-Windows clients that support floppy drive mapping can be configured manually with specific drive letter mappings for each drive.
Default Drive Mappings
The following table lists the default drive mappings for sessions. Client drives C and D are renamed V and U, because the server drives use the letters C and D.
| Logical drive letter | Drive letter in session | |
| Client drives | A (floppy drive) | A |
| B (floppy drive) | B | |
| C | C | |
| D | D | |
| Server drives | C | M |
| D | N | |
| E | O |
Simple things to know about the client drive redirection:
- Mapped drives are classified inside the session as Network Drives; redirected drivers have no specific Windows category so they are classified as Others.
- Before, users had to create scripts to add the network drives in the ICA session; this is not required with redirection. The only setting the user need to modify would be the policy to allow redirection for network drives on the client’s workstation.
- If an application depends on searching in the network drive, the application will fail. Redirected drives are not searchable by applications; in this case the user would require searching \CLIENT inside the session and mapped the desired drive. This can be done manually or by script.
