A mapped drive is simply a shortcut to a drive that is physically located on another computer.

The shortcut on your computer looks exactly like a shortcut for a local hard drive (such as drive C), which has its own letter assigned to it. The shortcut opens as if it were, but all the files on the assigned drive are actually physically stored on another computer.

It's similar to a shortcut on your desktop, for example a shortcut you use to open an image file in your Pictures folder, but you use it to access something from another computer.

Mapped drives allow you to access resources on another computer on your local network, as well as files on a website or FTP server.