how do I integrate existing network(shared) folders to a newly installed SharePoint Foundation?

Question

The setup:

• Active Directory users have access to a centralized network shared folder
• Source of the shared folder is on our storage NAS server(i.e. \NAS\SHARED_DATA*)
• We just setup a new SharePoint Foundation to a different Windows Server 2012 on a different machine within the network. (\SHAREPOINT1)

How can we integrate \NAS\SHARED_DATA\ into the newly setup SharePoint Foundation? Or is that possible with the free foundation version?

thanks.

Answer 1

There is no good OOTB solution for this. Especially if you would like the mapped drives behave like a document library and have search crawlers index the files.

For a very small scale and limited workaround a Page Viewer webpart can be pointed at a shared folder, however this will only display in IE in a low security intranet mode and the contents of the shared folder will not be crawled.

MS would suggest a content migration of your network drives across into the SP databases.

So the only real option is 3rd party. Something like this: AvePoint SharePoint File Share Integration

Disclaimer: Have not used this plugin and cannot vouch for its usability. https://stackoverflow.com/questions/21912495/use-an-existing-network-drive-in-sharepoint-2013