Timeout before disconnecting SMB shares

I consider myself a fairly smart guy, dabbling in linux, osx, windows networking over my years. I am in a pickle thought lately and my google-fu is failing me.

I have a number of machines in a network, most of them are 10.6, some 10.7. And a number of the machines have network shares, and all is good. When a user reboots, users are presented with a screen saying the network drive is not accessible, and to ignore or disconnect (all). I am sure you all know what screen that is.

However, if that user is not sitting in front of machine, it autodisconnects after...10-20 seconds? If it waited about 20 more seconds, the machine would be up and running 100%, but instead it creates havoc for me and everyone to 'reboot their machines' to reconnect all the drives they saved.

I even have it happening at my house on 2 10.8 machines. I reboot one, it looses the other, I need to remote into the headless machine to reconnect a drive so automation can continue. Where is this option to change. I dont recall older version being this finicky about it.

Any help would be appreciated.

AtomicGrog said:

First question I guess is why are you using SMB and not the native Apple share protocol? reason I'm asking is I've found using AFP between Macs is typically more robust.

You might have good reason to be using SMB, but if you don't I'd suggest you try swapping over and testing it out.

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I access some of the workstations from windows machines too. A few linux, but 75/25 mac/windows. There is no reason I shouldnt be able to use SMB though in this situation.

Thanks for the question, but staying on smb at the moment.

AtomicGrog said:

Thanks, do you have anything aggressive in your power management setup? spin down drives after a few seconds, dim screen etc.?

I'll try running a setup tonight between my machines to see if I get similar problems - I have plenty to choose from

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Most are iMacs with no power management whatsoever. A few of them are virtual machines even, everything turned off.