Windows like network drives

Hi everybody,

so I've been using the mac for a really long time and I'm looking for a better way to solve my problem.

Following scenario:

I have a MacBook Pro that is my main workhorse. I am traveling a lot between home and work. At home I have an external monitor and hdds that I have to attach every time I am there. No problem so far.

However, I figured I don't need high-speed drives since they only store documents and images. Now I bought a cheap windows pc that runs all the time and serves as a file server, means I connected the drives to it. It's running Windows 7.

Now it's very annoying to connect to the network drives by alias every time I come home (most of the time it won't discover the PC when I come home until I reboot it). Under windows I was able to simply add folders on a server as seperate drives and they were even treated like drives - Means I could install applications on them and whatsoever. How can I do this on my mac? All I want is that it automatically sees if I'm home and the drives are available or not.

What can I do?

Thanks,
Luka from Germany