etcher: Unable to open an image from the mapped network drive

  • Etcher version: 1.5.51
  • Operating system and architecture: Windows 10 Home x86-64
  • Image flashed: Any
  • Environment: Windows 10 Home is executed in the VMware Fusion on a Mac
    • This is probably irrelevant, because the problem is with mapped network drives
  • Forums post: Etcher on Windows7 under VMware can only access C drive?

VMware Fusion can share folders from the host OS. It’s implemented via mapped network drives.

Screenshot 2019-07-21 at 10 14 28

When I open an image from Z:\SharedWithVM\..., etcher thinks that the location is C:\SharedWithVM\... (Z -> C) and fails to open the image. Nothing interesting in logs, just ENOENT with wrong path:

Screenshot 2019-07-21 at 10 30 26

I’ve found an old issue with suggested workaround (comes from the Microsoft Support). I have this value already set …

Screenshot 2019-07-21 at 10 21 11

… and it still doesn’t work.

It works if the image is copied to a local drive.

About this issue

  • Original URL
  • State: open
  • Created 5 years ago
  • Reactions: 4
  • Comments: 29 (20 by maintainers)

Most upvoted comments

I believe that we have the same issue with 1.7.9

Flashing sdcard.img.xz from a mapped network drive on Win10/Win11 causes “Attention Looks like Etcher lost access to the drive. Did it get unplugged” Changing to the UNC path works as expected. E.g. Z:\b\sdcard.img.xz will fail \a\b\sdcard.img.xz works

I was able to add the file. WORKAROUND/

Please try and let me know if that works out for you.

Copy the file to your desktop and select the file straight from the desktop. Simple as that.

Really? this is not a valid workaround. there is a reason we have the .iso/.whatever on a network drive. it makes 0 sense to need to transfer (for example) a 6GB windows server iso to my desktop just to flash it. it should be able to read from the network share.

example iso directory on NAS: image

@lurch we don’t know if the read will fail in the writer process at this point.

@lurch that makes sense, but this error appears immediately after the image selection. I mean, target device not selected yet, didn’t click on the Flash button, just launched Etcher and selected an image. AFAIK elevated privileges are required when I click on the Flash button.