Windows 7 by default does not allow you to include network drives in a library. This is because folders must be indexed first in order to be added to a library, and network drives cannot be indexed unless they are synchronized. There are 2 solutions to this problem.

The first solution: Synchronize the Network Drive.

Right click on the network drive you wish to include to a library and select “Always Available Offline”. This will start the synchronization process. The downside is that this method will copy all of the data on that drive to your local machine. Not a good option really since it means doubling up on the remote data and copying all of it to your local computer.

The second solution: use mklink to create a link to the remote network drive.

1. Create a temporary folder on your hard drive: eg. c:\stuff

2. Create another folder in the above folder. i.e. c:\stuff\data

3. Link the Library to this folder.

4. Delete the folder (c:\stuff\data).

5. Use the mklink command in an elevated command prompt to make a symbolic link. Name the link the same as the folder you created above. i.e -

mklink /d c:\stuff\data \\server\data

6. The process is complete. Now you have a non-indexed network path as a library. Very cool.