Best Network Attached Storage Under $300 2. WD 4TB My Cloud Personal Network Attached Storage. If you’d prefer not to purchase a diskless drive NAS, Western Digital My Cloud Personal Network Attached Storage may be a good option, especially if you work in a law firm or some other job where there aren ’t a lot of computers sharing the same NAS. NAS storage is that it is much slower than a hard drive. Think of it as being more like a filing cabinet or bookcase. It’s primary role is STORAGE and sharing with other computer. With the purchase of my new Mac Mini I’ve decided it’s a good time to transfer the bulk of my data over to a network attached storage. Networked drives A networked drive can range from a specialized appliance that offers data redundant storage such as a Synology Diskstation to a lone PC that has a shared folder visible on the network. If you plan on running your application off of files on a networked drive, you'll be limited to the bandwidth of the networked device.
- Connect To Network Drive Mac
- Map Windows Network Drive Mac
- Share Mac Network Drive
- Home Network Mac
- Map Network Drive On Mac
How to temporary or permanently map a network drive on a Mac?
Network drive is probably the best alternative for work or home environments where more than one computer is used to share files between them. However, macOS can't automatically detect network devices, unlike installed hardware. So you need to manually install and set them up, afterwards you will need to map a network drive on your Mac. Mapping a network is a process, where you reveal the path to a storage device attached to a network.
There are two methods how to map your network drive on Mac. First would be for temporary use, where you loose your path to network drive after restart. The second would be a permanent one, where your Mac will detect and mount the network drive every time it connect to the same network with attached storage. Speaking about business, network storage usually comes in the form of server storage, SANs (storage area network), NAS (network attached storage) and cloud services. However, home users also can use the same technologies, but SANs requires higher budget, so NAS or cloud storage would be more efficient.
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What is a network drive?
In case you're not an experienced computer user, you probably wonder what actually is a network drive, although what SAN and NAS is and what is their differences and possibilities?
A network drive is basically any type of storage connected to your router. In most frequent cases these are made up of computers, who's acting like servers to provide storage. A NAS device might be either an external hard drive (even usb flash key) connected to your home router, either assigned NAS device builded with own hardware and multiple drives. Yahoo messenger for mac el capitan. However, storage connects to you router and permits to authorized users to reach it. A SAN is basically a more complicated NAS, that can have numerous drives available in same network. These are frequently used in enterprise.
How to temporary map a network drive
Using this method your network drive will be connected and mounted for one time use, which means that it will disappear if you disconnect from network or simply reboot your Mac.
Connect To Network Drive Mac
First open Mac 0010OS Finder app, that press Command and K buttons to launch Connect to Server window. Enter the route to the network drive you desire to map, for example: smb://networkcomputer/networkshare and click Connect.
Enter your log in details and click OK to mount the network drive. From now till reboot your network drive will be shown on your desktop and in the Finder's window sidebar. You can access the network share like a usual folder at this point.
Map a network drive to Mac OS which automatically re-mounts after reconnection
![Map windows network drive mac Map windows network drive mac](https://www.macworld.co.uk/cmsdata/slideshow/3674321/best_mac_nas_drives_wd_1600.jpg)
Using this method will leave you an openings to reboot your Mac and keep the network drive mapped as well as network reconnections. Your Mac will automatically remounts the drive, so you will be able to find your desktop shortcut whenever you connect to network.
First open Mac 0010OS Finder app, that press Command and K buttons to launch Connect to Server window. Enter the route to the network drive you desire to map, for example: smb://networkcomputer/networkshare and click Connect.
Enter your log in details and click OK to mount the network drive. Once your drive is mounted, you need to enable automatic mounts, so open System Preferences from the Apple menu. Click on Users and Groups (or Accounts in older OS) and choose Login Items. Click on add (+) button to add another login item, locate the network drive you have mounted before and click Add. From now on your network drive will be mapped and automatically remounted every time you reboot your Mac.
However, if you disconnect or loose connection to network where the mapped network drive is located, it won't reconnect automatically until you reconnect to the network and reboot your computer. What is more, shared drive will be accessible through Finder as usual folder.
Make network drive accessible from Mac desktop
Good news that you may access your network drive through your Mac's desktop icon. Just follow several steps and create an icon which always appear on desktop when you connect to network.
First open Finder preferences from a menu bar in very top of you window, this appears when Finder is launched. Click the General tab and select the checkbox next to Connected Servers. This step ensure you to see the drives icon on your desktop, uncheck it and it will be only accessible in Finder window sidebars.
Map Windows Network Drive Mac
Mount a mapped network drive with a one click
There is a very useful additional step which allows you to create an alias of the mapped network drive, so you will be able to reconnect to the share with just one click. To create an alias, just right-click your mapped network drive icon on the desktop and select Make Alias. Once you've created alias just double-click it and your Mac reconnect to the network drive instantly. This is really useful, if you reconnecting to a network repeatedly.
Video Showing how to map a network drive on Mac:
To use Time Machine to make a backup of your Mac, you need any of these types of storage devices:
- External drive connected to an AirPort Extreme Base Station (802.11ac) or AirPort Time Capsule
After setting up the storage device, you can use Time Machine to make a backup of your Mac. And after making your backup, you can use Time Machine to restore files from your backup.
External drive connected to your Mac
Share Mac Network Drive
Usb windows mac. Time Machine can back up to an external drive connected to a USB, Thunderbolt, or FireWire port on your Mac.
Home Network Mac
External drive connected to an AirPort Extreme Base Station (802.11ac) or AirPort Time Capsule
Time Machine can back up to an external USB drive connected to an AirPort Extreme Base Station (802.11ac model) or AirPort Time Capsule.
- Make sure that the USB drive is formatted for Time Machine.
- Connect the drive to a USB port on your AirPort base station, then turn it on.
- Open AirPort Utility, then select your base station and click Edit to view its settings.
- Click the Disks tab in the settings window.
- Select your backup disk from the list of partitions, then select ”Enable file sharing”:
- If more than one user on your network will back up to this disk with Time Machine, you can use the Secure Shared Disks pop-up menu to make sure that they can view only their own backups, not yours. Choose ”With accounts” from the menu, then click the Add (+) button to add users.
- Click Update to restart your base station and apply the settings.
AirPort Time Capsule
Time Machine can back up to the built-in hard disk of an AirPort Time Capsule on your network.
Mac shared as a Time Machine backup destination
To use another Mac on your network as a Time Machine backup destination, complete these steps on the other Mac:
- Choose Apple menu > System Preferences, then click Sharing.
- From the list of services on the left, select File Sharing.
- From the list of Shared Folders on the right, Control-click the folder that you want to use for Time Machine backups.
- From the shortcut menu that opens, choose Advanced Options.
- From the Advanced Options dialog, select ”Share as a Time Machine backup destination.”
When setting up Time Machine on your other Mac computers, you should now be able to select the shared folder as a backup disk.
![Mac Mac](https://blog.pcrisk.com/images/stories/blog/2018/how-to-map-network-drive-on-mac/users-and-groups.jpg)
Network-attached storage (NAS) device that supports Time Machine over SMB
Many third-party NAS devices support Time Machine over SMB. For details, check the documentation for your NAS device.
How to format a disk for Time Machine
Mac style mechanical keyboard. Time Machine supports all Mac OS Extended (Journaled) formats and Xsan formats. If the disk isn't using the correct format, Time Machine automatically prompts you to erase it when you connect it to your Mac:
If you need to erase the disk manually, use the Disk Utility app to erase using the Mac OS Extended (Journaled) format.
Map Network Drive On Mac
Time Machine can't back up to an iOS device or disk formatted for Windows. And if your disk uses the Master Boot Record (MBR) partition scheme, some of its partitions might not be available for use with Time Machine.