Mac and NAS drive [Archive] - The Art of Sound Forum

jantheman

22-03-2011, 14:46

Tim

22-03-2011, 15:28

Being new to Macs I am looking for a pointer on how to auto connect to a NAS drive on startup. At the moment I have to go to Finder/Go/Connect to server and select the drive. Is there a way to set this up so it happens automatically on Mac startup....
Buy a PC :eyebrows:

.............. sorry to be flippant, I just couldn't help myself and sorry, but I have no idea :(

Beechwoods

22-03-2011, 17:14

The way I access a drive I've mounted previously is via the 'Recent Items' options under the 'Apple' menu IIRC. This is dead easy, you can do it from anywhere and is less faff than going to Finder, Go, Servers etc.

I must admit that what I often do with drives I access a lot is set up a symbolic link (Unix shortcut) to the drive or volume, and that Symbolic Link gets treated as if were a local directory, providing you've already connected to the volume you want at least once since you've started your machine (OSX keeps drives mounted through sleep and whatever, and only disconnects on logout, at least mine does). The easiest way to do this is by downloading the little context menu add-on Symbolic Linker (http://seiryu.home.comcast.net/~seiryu/symboliclinker.html) - this allows you to right-click on the drive when it's on your desktop or via Go > Computer and select 'Make Symbolic Link' - which creates a shortcut on the Desktop, which looks like an OSX Alias and you can then drag it wherever you like. Think of that Symbolic Link as if it were the drive itself. In Unix it basically is.

There is a longwinded way of mounting a drive automoatically on startup but I've never tried it myself.

http://www.stress-free.co.nz/using_osxs_automounter_for_transparent_access_to_r emote_media

Hope this helps,

Nick

jantheman

22-03-2011, 18:03

Thanks Nick...I'll give it a go...

Beechwoods

24-03-2011, 16:36

Any joy?

webby

24-03-2011, 18:53

Ray,

There's an easier way. Mount the drive manually as you do now, then, open Accounts in System Prefs. Go to your account and click Login Items. Then, drag the NAS drive icon into the login items list.

Bob's your Uncle!

..and Lee's your mac friend :)

Let me know how it goes.

p.s. which NAS drive have you got?

jantheman

24-03-2011, 19:39

Thanks Lee..that works great. My NAS is a D-link DNS-323 with 2 1Tb drives set up as Raid1

jantheman

24-03-2011, 19:41

Thanks for the info Nick.....by the time I got gack to the puter Lee posted what semed to be a very easy solution so I went with that and it seems to work OK. Thanks for your efforts though....mucho appreciated.

Beechwoods

24-03-2011, 20:08

No worries! Excellent tip Lee - didn't realise it was so simple!

webby

24-03-2011, 22:20

No worries! Excellent tip Lee - didn't realise it was so simple!

Glad to help! Mac support is my new job! :)