title: Creating a hyperlink to a physical path on the local PC, to files not part of the web site
body: <p>I have some files in a folder on the harddrive, like C:\ExtraContent\ that has some PDF files.  This folder is not part of the website.  I was able to successfully upload a PDF to this folder using the default ASP.NET FileUploader, no problem.</p>
  
  <p>What I would like to do is, create a hyperlink that links to a PDF in that folder C:\ExtraContent\somePDF.pdf</p>
  
  <p>I am able to get close using a Button with the following code:</p>
  
  <pre><code>protected void Button1_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)
  {
      WebClient client = new WebClient();
      Byte[] buffer = client.DownloadData("C:\ExtraContent\somePDF.pdf");
      Response.ContentType = "application/pdf";
      Response.AddHeader("content-length", buffer.Length.ToString());
      Response.BinaryWrite(buffer);
  }
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>The above works in terms of opening the file.  But I can't get this to work with an ASP.NET HyperLink.</p>
  
  <p>The reason I want to use a HyperLink is so that the user can choose to right-click and Save As, to download a copy.  If HyperLink controls can only link to relative paths, what can I do to get my desired result?</p>
  
  <p>Note: making the files I'm trying to access part of the site is not practical for us.</p>