The video mounts a Windows folder inside the NAS. Most days you also want the mirror image: your Synology folders sitting in Windows Explorer as drive letters, ready for every program. Here is that direction, done properly.
A mapped drive is a promise Windows makes at every sign-in: this letter is that NAS folder. Set it up once with the right ticks and it quietly reconnects forever; skip the ticks and you will be re-typing paths every morning. The setup also answers a common question - can several shares live side by side? Yes: one mapping per share, each with its own letter, all using the same DSM account.
👆 The two ticks decide whether the mapping survives a reboot and whether Windows uses your DSM login instead of your Windows login.
This direction needs a service running on the Synology side:
While you are in Control Panel, check Shared Folder and confirm your DSM user actually has permission on the folder you want to map. A missing permission there looks exactly like a wrong password later.
\\192.168.1.20\OfficeFiles"Remember my credentials" is what lets Reconnect work silently - Windows stores the login in Credential Manager and replays it at sign-in. If the password later changes, the stored one goes stale; the password-fix guide in this series covers that repair.
You can map by name, like \\NASNAME\OfficeFiles, and when it works it is friendly. But name resolution on home networks is fragile, while the NAS's IP address always points at the same box. Use the IP form, and give the NAS a fixed address in your router so the path never changes. The companion guide on the IP route explains why names fail and how the address stays pinned.
Several shares? Map each one separately: \\192.168.1.20\OfficeFiles to O:, \\192.168.1.20\Movies to M:, and so on. The NAS side plays the same game in reverse - File Station can mount many different Windows folders, each into its own empty destination folder (Synology allows up to 100 remote folders).
One Windows rule saves real frustration: you can only be signed in to a given server with one set of credentials at a time. Mapping a second share on the same NAS with a different DSM user fails with a "multiple connections to a server are not allowed" error. Keep one DSM account for all shares from that NAS and the errors never appear.
Watch the video for the mounting direction - a Windows folder living inside the NAS - and use this page for the drive-letter direction back.
▶️ Watch Full VideoAny free letter works, but letters near the end of the alphabet (Z:, Y:, X:) are the safe habit: Windows hands out early letters to USB drives and card readers, so a NAS mapped to Z: never gets pushed off its letter.
The IP address is the more reliable choice on a home network, because it does not depend on name resolution working. Pair it with a fixed address for the NAS in the router (a DHCP reservation), and the path stays correct forever.
Browsing the Network folder is unreliable even on healthy networks, so always type the path directly, like \\192.168.1.20\OfficeFiles. If typing it fails too, check that SMB is enabled in DSM and that your DSM user has permission on that shared folder.