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Network Storage?

C

CoolMe

macrumors member
Original poster
Apr 26, 2008
72
0
London
I'm a big windows fan for many reasons, but like both mac and windows :)

I've got a macbook pro and a Buffalo Linkstation Live - works lovely with windows, got it mapped as a network drive Z:/

Now how could I get the same sort of file referance? i.e. the Z:/

Only reason is all my music on itunes is stored on the NAS and it would be a real pain in the ass to move it all
 
system prefs>sharing>turn on windows sharing is the first step.

then open finder, go>connect to server and enter

smb://<ip>/<share>

should do you i think...

you should then see the share mounted inside finder. if you have access credentials you'll need to store them in keychain.

there's a good macrumours article here ... http://guides.macrumors.com/Networking_Windows_with_Mac_OS_X

:D

getting at windows shares confused me lots as there's lots of conflicting information and many solutions that involve proprietary software ... unless you need access to a w2k3 server I don't think any of the software is actually required anymore...
 
Cheers - I'll look at that article.

But theres no way to actauly mount it with a drive letter?
 
CoolMe said:
Cheers - I'll look at that article.

But theres no way to actauly mount it with a drive letter?
Click to expand...
Drive letters don't exist in Mac OS X. You can mount it on Mac OS X by connecting to it with the Connect to Server option in the Go menu - once that's done you can use it like you would any other disk.
 
If you look at the red box,
screenie22222.jpg


This is the location where all my music is stored on my NAS

Z:\Music

With out a network drive its

\\MSHOME\Zeus\Public\Music\

I'm trying to re-create the Z:\
 
CoolMe said:
If you look at the red box,
[screenshot removed from quote]
This is the location where all my music is stored on my NAS

Z:\Music

With out a network drive its

\\MSHOME\Zeus\Public\Music\

I'm trying to re-create the Z:\
Click to expand...
You can't do that exactly. What you CAN do, though, is go to Connect to Server, type in:
Code: 
smb://MSHOME/Zeus/Public
...as the server to connect to, then click OK. After any authentication, a drive will mount on your system, called Public. You can then use this to reference files.
 
:confused: I don't really understand your problem?

As previous posters have said, drive letters don't exist in OsX. They just don't.

If you realllllllly need to call the thing Z from a mac for some reason, you'd have to read it via the PC so something like \\network\machine\Z:\share

On a mac, you'd just mount it as a drive after connecting to it as a server.

You could still call the mounted share Z I suppose, but it would just cause confusion.

If the problem is that you've just ditched a PC for a Mac and you've got iTunes full of references to a location you can't refer to anymore, then I think you might have to just reimport your library en masse from the NAS box? I might be wrong on that score, but I think it might be the quickest option unless there's something I really don't understand or missed... It wouldn't be too traumatic I wouldn't have thought. Just leave it overnight.

If, on the other hand you have a network that's largely windows with a NAS box full of choons and a mac that you also want to use, there shouldn't be a problem. ITunes on the wintel boxes would use the Z:\... but the mac would just call the box a different name. You'd be running ITunes independently on both platforms so I don't see the problem? Both systems would call the actual library the same names, but the box the library resides in would be different depending on platform.
 
wrldwzrd89 said:
You can't do that exactly. What you CAN do, though, is go to Connect to Server, type in:
Code: 
smb://MSHOME/Zeus/Public
...as the server to connect to, then click OK. After any authentication, a drive will mount on your system, called Public. You can then use this to reference files.
Click to expand...

that's what i was trying to say, sorry! I type too much. Sorry, no more coffee today for me...
 
Okay drive letters don't exist :(

But what I was trying to say is, if I were to import my iTunes libray over, all the file referacnes would be out of sync i.e. it would be trying to call Z: when there is no more Z:

And I'd have to find and locate each file.

Thanks for helping :apple:
 
um, sorry!

I hadn't realised ITunes referenced things like that. I don't have much of a library at the moment cos I never got quite as far as importing it to Mac, but my old Ogg library for WinAmp was ordered treewise along drive:\\band\album\track lines and if anything went wrong, or i pulled the drive and stuck it in another server I just told WinAmp to forget all about where it thought things were and go and have another look at the drive.

I assumed ITunes would play the same game? Or to put it differently, if you install iTunes on a mac, and then connect the mac to the NAS, then when it parses the contents of the drive to build it's library, why would the windows names matter? Can iTunes not read the album and band tags and order it's representation of your collection appropriately? I would have thought the hardest part was getting the album art back...

I've never pushed iTunes very hard cos I don't have a pod :eek: and it doesn't deal with internet radio particularly well...
 
Captain Pyro said:
I assumed ITunes would play the same game? Or to put it differently, if you install iTunes on a mac, and then connect the mac to the NAS, then when it parses the contents of the drive to build it's library, why would the windows names matter?
Click to expand...

I had the same idea on the functioning of iTunes. Doesn't it create a local library that contains the address of the music file? That would mean you canhave the music in one location and access it from different machines, regardless of each computers links the music files.

Anyway, why did you map the drive and not link to it directly in windows too? You should be able to point to the share directly.

Or take a different approach like this:

http://wiki.fireflymediaserver.org/Linkstation_Live_Pro_Install
 
misterredman said:
Anyway, why did you map the drive and not link to it directly in windows too? You should be able to point to the share directly.

Or take a different approach like this:

http://wiki.fireflymediaserver.org/Linkstation_Live_Pro_Install
Click to expand...

I don't understand what you mean?

I've got the drives mapped in windows:

screeni123.jpg


I was advised against running the media server due to the fact it would shorten the Linkstations life because the hard drive would be running constantly and not go into standby.

Regards my iTunes libray, i keep it local in my Music folder but all the music is stored remotely
 
Can't you reach the share with the music from your mac? That way you can create a library that points to the NAS for the music files.
I don't understand why you need to map the share to use it with your mac.

Try this:

In iTunes on your mac deselect the the option that makes iTunes manage your library. Then add the music to the library by pointing it to the shared folder on your NAS. Since the address of each music file is stored in the library that is local your PC will still use the Z: while the mac will use the other address.

About the hard drive not spinning down I don't know how your NAS works, but on mine if I stop accessing the music it will spin down. The trick is to set it so that it only looks for new music when you want (when you actually add new music) and not at a fixed interval.
 
CoolMe said:
Okay drive letters don't exist :(

But what I was trying to say is, if I were to import my iTunes libray over, all the file referacnes would be out of sync i.e. it would be trying to call Z: when there is no more Z:

And I'd have to find and locate each file.

Thanks for helping :apple:
Click to expand...
Actually, this isn't as big of a problem as you might think. Once you have the share connected, and a copy of the library on your Mac, all you have to do is this:
  1. Tell iTunes to add the music folder on the NAS to its library.
  2. Run Super Remove Dead Tracks to get rid of all the dead duplicate entries.
 
All that mapping a drive in windows means is that when you want to access it you type the letter you have it mapped to, in this case Z: It's a shortcut by another name.

The problems are that sometimes windows drops shares for no particular reason, and i believe you take a small resource hit as there is an extra layer of network address translation, I might be wrong about the last, but that's certainly how it feels on a 2k3 server based network with a lot of servers, drives and shares. I usually get snappier response by entering a path direct to a share than using a mapped drive.

The NAS is effectively a standalone file server called Zeus. The path to your music files would be \\mshome\zeus\public\music. Z=\\mshome\zeus\public.

If this is all about wanting to just clone the library from windows, noting that the library is a bunch of references pointing to the music, then surely reassociating a 90gig library (I think that's right?) wouldn't be too bad, especially given the script file pointed at above to let you just do a straight re-import and then knock out the redundant links? You aren't going to have to feed the mac version all the music all over again, just let it look at what's already there and build a new library that will then maintain sync with the file store on the NAS independently and concurrently with the windows machine. Both copies of iTunes will behave like they have the music and noone else, and for that matter both should be able to play it at the same time, network willing. The NAS box itself is the shared resource, and the mac or for that matter any other machine that you care to add to the network really don't care that one pc that happens to be running windows thinks it's called Z:, they just see it as its share names and partitions and files.

My Mac based iTunes library, made with default settings, is arranged along the lines of \\iTunesMusic\artist\album\tracks. I would have thought that would make it a trivial task to just move the whole lot to another drive (in finder,explorer, via a stack of dvds or whatever) and then teach a new install of itunes or any other music playing software to find the music i wanted, couple of hours tops if I went through and did lots of hand edits.

Simply copy and pasting the xml for the library across the network isn't really the way it's meant to be used, but as this line from mine indicates, it's using standard paths to the files too... %20 is a 'space' (like ascii 32)

<key>Location</key><string>file://localhost/Users/marie/Music/iTunes/iTunes%20Music/Sonic%20Youth/Washing%20Machine/06%20Little%20Trouble%20Girl.m4a</string>
Click to expand...
 
summing up and forgetting about drive letters and everything else, i'd just fire up itunes on the mac and go file>add to library (CMD-O) and just let it add the entire contents of \\zeus\public\music, not forgetting to deselect 'allow itunes to manage my library' to avoid possible sync issues between different copies of itunes. Then sign in to your ITMS account and let it go fetch your cover art overnight.

I really don't see why it needs to be more complicated than this.
 
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