permanent network drive in osx

[keithpetey]

background: i have two 12" ibooks, a leftover pc with 80gb of space, and an airport extreme. i have the pc hooked up to the airport extreme with a network cable and the two ibooks connect to the airport extreme wirelessly. i already have file sharing set up on the windows computer and everything works.

problem: i want the ibook to connect to the networked drive automatically as if it were another hard drive. this way i can have all my music on my pc and itunes can just grab those files wirelessly. right now i have to go to network and then choose my pc and then the drive i am sharing. anyone know a quicker way to do this? i remember on the school computers they would do this in windows. they would have a few servers that were basic storage for all the other computers.

thanks in advance,
keith

 

[James Philp]

Not sure how to do it automatically, but if you have tiger you can do it very quickly thus:
Apple Menu>Recent Servers>PC HD
One (Or Two) Clicks and you're done.
I'd quite like to know a way of automating too. My setup is iMac plugged in and using simply 2 airport cards between them.
In my experience, lost network drives are hated by OS X, and the sub-system can hang for ages while it realizes the drive isn't there anymore!

 

[yg17]

OS9 and before had an option to connect to servers, but I don't think OSX does. So, a workaround that should work is make a quick Automator workflow to connect to the server ("Get Specified Servers" action, then "Connect to Servers" action) save it as an app. Go to your "Accounts" prefpane, then under "Login Items" add the new automator app and that should work

 

[Makosuke]

Actually, I've found the easiest way to do this is to create an alias of the desired servers, either somewhere in the Finder (desktop, probably) or just in the dock. If you then make sure it's set to remember your password (in the Options tab of the login dialogue), a single click (on the Dock) will connect to and open your server.

If you want it automatically connected at login, you can add the server (or an alias) to your Login Items list (System Prefs --> Accounts --> Login Items, then use the + button or just drag it in). That'll connect and open a Finder window on login.

Though a way to do something like Windows' "map network drive" would be nice--perhaps there's a way to do this using Netinfo, or by permanently adding something to the /Volumes directory? Anybody more technically versed done this in an office/professional setting, perhaps?

 

[Makosuke]

I'll add that this should definitely be possible with NFS mounts, but depending on your network setup, those may not be too secure. Here's a couple of tutorials I found (both a bit old, may or may not work under 10.3/10.4) that are both focused on NFS mounts:

http://www.bombich.com/mactips/automount.html
http://sial.org/howto/osx/automount/#s4

...and there is a "mounts" section of the Netinfo database, though I have no idea how or if it might be used for this purpose.

 

[keithpetey]

thanks for all the help everyone. i made the alias' and found that it was simple enough for me. when i run itunes and pick a song from there that is on the file server i found out that it actually connects automatically, so its good enough for me.

thanks everyone,
keith