Will my being on a network drive and having a file open prevent others from accessing the drive?

Question

I had someone say the other day that if I had a file open on a network drive that it would prevent other users from accessing the drive at all. Is that true? I have never heard or experienced this before since I opened up a file on the drive it was on and it told me it was being edited by another user and I could only look at the document. Could you please tell me of a situation(s) that this could happen when someone is on a network drive?

Answer 1

It is as you experienced. The drive is not locked, just the file locked in that you cannot open for update

Answer 2

Keep in mind that this perspective is coming from a programmer of 20+ years on both platforms.

If you are on a Windows PC, and the other user is on a Windows PC, then the statement is true for the most part.
Although, some applications (such as Quicken) don't open a file for write access until they need to, so they may work if both people open the same file.

Now, if you're on a Unix workstation, then really all bets are off. One person (if they have the authorization set up), can overwrite a file at any given time. This is because it operates in the "gentlemen's agreement" mode, where you use the the same function calls to open the document. As an example, someone could have a document opened in NEdit, and someone else could come through and modify that file (or even delete it I believe).

There are ways in Windows to allow users to overwrite files, but it has be be built into the application (by using different system level function calls).

Answer 3

It depends on the permissions that have been set on the network share(s) or the network drive as to what user can do what, also there are file locks and depending on what file type or what you are trying to do over the network with the file or files will effect the file or files, ie if one user has a word document open whilst another use is trying to edit it and the second user over writes what the first user has done then the alteration the first user makes will be lost if the second user deletes it or replaces it with something else and then saves it.

But that all depends on the access rights that user 1 and user 2 both have to that file or folder or drive in question.

Answer 4

It will definitely not prevent others from accessing the drive - it will only prevent them from editing and saving to that file - however, they can open the file and edit it and save a new copy.

Answer 5

The only reason I can think of is if your network administrator has it set up to do that. Otherwise it would just restrict access to the specific file that you are using.

Answer 6

Someone is filling you with a story. The point of having a network drive is to setup a many to one storage solution.

Answer 7

sometimes