Please see:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/system.web.httpserverutility.mappath%28v=vs.110%29.aspx[
^].
Normally, Web applications are executed in a sandboxed environment which does not allow the access to the file system. It is limited to the files under the root directory of configured for a give site ("~/.").
Moreover, there a no situations when hard-code paths names are useful. Using them kills portability and maintenance of the application. On some other system, you may not have some directory anymore, so what would you do?
—SA