UNC Names vs Drive Letters

From a technical standpoint, does Windows use UNC names any different than
drive letters for shared folders?

Which is preferred?

With drive mappings you have a max of 26, which can be a bit limiting when
USB drives have to be allowed-for as well.

Most users seem to prefer drive-mappings as being 'understandable
technology' whereas UNC paths are geek territory.

UNC paths seem like a good idea until you have to migrate data, or replace a
server. Then you realise their shortcomings. The UNC paths contain the server
name and or IP address, which means that they are immovably 'nailed down'
onto that server.

Even if you write a script to update all the official UNC mappings, there
may be unauthorised ones which the users have created themselves, and these
will still point to the old server. This situation also demands that the old
server is immediately decomissioned or firewalled-off. If it's left visible
on the LAN, this is inviting data misplacement/loss.

Having been through this debacle, I'd strongly advise AGAINST using UNC
paths.

"frederick" wrote:

> From a technical standpoint, does Windows use UNC names any different than
> drive letters for shared folders?
>
> Which is preferred?