Two things that look the same but aren’t
If your team shares files, you are almost certainly using one of two setups. The first is a mapped shared drive, often the familiar “S:” or “Z:” drive that lives on a server or NAS in the office. The second is SharePoint, the document library that comes with Microsoft 365 and sits behind Teams.
On screen they can look identical: folders, subfolders, and files everyone can open. Under the bonnet they work in completely different ways, and that difference decides how well your team copes with remote working, accidental overwrites, and the day a hard drive fails. Here is how to weigh them up.
Access anywhere versus access on the network
A traditional shared drive is tied to your local network. When everyone sits in the same office on the same connection, it is fast and simple. The moment someone works from home, a client’s site, or a café, that drive is out of reach unless you bolt on a VPN, which adds cost, complexity, and a support burden of its own.
SharePoint is built the other way round. Because the files live in Microsoft’s cloud, a laptop with a browser or the OneDrive sync client can reach them from anywhere, with no VPN. Staff sign in with their normal Microsoft 365 account, and you control who sees what through the same login. For any team that works across more than one location, this is usually the single biggest reason to move.
Version history: the quiet lifesaver
On a mapped drive, if someone overwrites a document or deletes the wrong folder, the previous version is simply gone. Your only hope is whatever sits in last night’s backup, assuming that backup ran and can be restored quickly.
SharePoint keeps a running version history of every file. If a colleague saves a mistake over an important spreadsheet, you can open the version history, see who changed what and when, and roll back to any earlier copy in a few clicks. Deleted files also sit in a recycle bin for a period before they truly disappear. This is not a substitute for a proper backup, but it turns many “we’ve lost the file” panics into a two-minute fix.
Working on the same file at once
Two people opening the same document on a shared drive is a recipe for a “file is locked” message or, worse, two conflicting copies. SharePoint supports genuine co-authoring: several people can edit the same Word, Excel, or PowerPoint file at the same time and see each other’s changes live. For teams that collaborate on the same handful of documents, this alone removes a lot of daily friction.
When a mapped drive still makes sense
SharePoint is not the right answer for everyone. A local shared drive can still be the better choice when:
- You handle very large files. Video editing, CAD, and large design libraries move faster over a local network than over a broadband upload. Cloud sync can struggle with huge files that change constantly.
- Specialist software expects a drive letter. Some accounting, database, and industry-specific packages are hard-coded to read and write to a mapped path and behave badly against a synced cloud folder.
- Your internet is slow or unreliable. If a cloud outage or a dropped connection would stop everyone working, an on-site drive with a solid backup may suit you better.
- You already run a well-maintained server. If it is patched, backed up, and monitored, there may be no urgency to change.
Plenty of businesses end up with a sensible mix: SharePoint for the everyday documents everyone collaborates on, and a local drive for the heavy or specialist workloads that genuinely need it.
Don’t skip the backup question
A common misunderstanding is that because SharePoint lives in the cloud, it is automatically backed up. Microsoft keeps the service running and protects against their own hardware failure, but if a member of staff or a piece of ransomware deletes files, the recycle bin only holds them for so long. Whichever route you choose, you still want an independent backup that keeps its own copy on a separate schedule.
How to decide
Start with how your team actually works. If people need their files from more than one location, regularly tread on each other’s edits, or have been bitten by an overwrite, SharePoint solves real problems. If everything happens in one office, your files are large or tied to legacy software, and your server is properly looked after, a mapped drive may still serve you well. The wrong move is drifting into either one by accident.
If you would like a second opinion before committing, we are happy to look at how your team shares files and recommend the least disruptive path. A tidy Microsoft 365 setup or a carefully planned cloud migration is far easier when it is mapped out first. Call us on 020 7610 0500, drop into the Putney workshop, or use the contact form and we will point you in the right direction.
