Map an ADLS Gen2 storage to a a windows drive

Question

A colleague of mine has indicated that it is not possible to map an Azure Data Lake Storage Gen2 store to a mapped drive in Windows. I'm not a specialist on this, but I'm very skeptical on this statement, as I see elsewhere that this should be possible: it is possible to connect a file share to a Blob storage, and to map a drive to a file share. And ADLS Gen2 is built on top of Azure Blob Storage.

I did notice this question being discussed here, but it wasn't really answered.

Could anyone clarify this for me? Either why it would not be possible or, if it is, how it can be done?

Thanks!

Answer 1

No - this video shows how to map a drive to an Azure File Storage (file share) - not to an Azure Blob storage

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hth

Marcin

Answer 2

Hello Mr Gou,

Thank you for posting your query here!

Adding on to the previous response, Azure Data Lake Storage Gen2 (ADLS Gen2) is indeed built on top of Azure Blob Storage. However, unlike Azure File Storage, which supports the SMB protocol and can be directly mounted as a drive on a Windows machine, ADLS Gen2 does not natively support this capability. ADLS Gen2 uses the Blob REST APIsI for data access, which might not be compatible with the SMB protocol used by Windows to map network drives.

If you check the doc: https://taurit.pl/access-azure-data-lake-storage-like-local-drive-in-windows/

Enabling NFS access for a storage account does not provide a direct solution for mounting ADLS Gen2 as a drive in Windows. Additionally, the requirement to place the storage account in a Virtual Network when enabling NFS access further complicates the setup, making it less feasible for typical scenarios.

Please note that there are some workarounds for this. One of the easiest ways to access the ADLS Gen2 storage account from Windows machines is using the SFTP protocol. This doesn’t mount the storage as a drive but allows you to interact with the files using an SFTP client.

SFTP support for Azure Blob Storage - Azure Storage | Microsoft Learn

Another option is to use Azure Storage Explorer, a graphical tool that allows you to interact with your Azure storage resources, including ADLS Gen2.

Do let us know if you have any further queries. I’m happy to assist you further.

Please do not forget to "Accept the answer” and “up-vote” wherever the information provided helps you, this can be beneficial to other community members.

Answer 3

Hi @Mr Gou - Thanks for reaching out.

Yes, you can't mount blob storage account (HNS Enabled) as a network drive. This is a limitation which is discussed in the below link and also talks about a workaround via a GitHub Project:

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/storage/blobs/network-file-system-protocol-known-issues#nfs-30-clients

There are other 3rd party solution as well such as CloudBerry that helps mounting blob storage as a Network drive however, we can't control its behavior or troubleshoot as it will be outside MS support boundaries.

Now, a GPv2 account (with HNS enabled) will support services such as Blob, Queues, Files and Tables. So, although a HNS account it can also have file shares residing too and for that, you can mount as Network Drive. I hope this clarifies your ask as to ADLS Gen2 is on top of Blob Storage which can't be mounted as Network Drive however File Shares which is another storage offering in the same storage account can be mounted.

Please let me know for any further queries and will be glad to assist.Please do not forget to "Accept the answer” and “up-vote” wherever the information provided helps you, this can be beneficial to other community members.