How to add MM Network Drives to a MAC Computer

Adding a Windows Server network drive to a Mac computer is slightly weird, but easy enough.

1. Open "Finder" (looks like the old MACos face logo) and press Command + K to open the "Connect to Server" dialogue. Type in the path of the network share, but with a few modifications.

      a. On a windows machine, you use backslashes (e.g. \\10.0.0.11\M Drive\) to connect to file/url paths.

      b. On the Mac, start by adding "smb:" in front of the path, like "smb:\\10.0.0.11\M Drive" and then switch the slashes to be forward slashes, like "smb://10.0.0.11/M Drive."

      c. Once you've done this, click the Connect button to continue.

2. Open System Preferences (gear icon) and select the "Users & Groups" option.

3. Once in Users and Groups, click the lock and sign in with the admin user (MMIT in 1pass) and then navigate to "Login Items" near the top right.

4. Click the Plus sign near the bottom middle to add an item to the "Login items" list. These are applications, etc, which automatically get signed into upon reboot.

5. Select the share under "Locations" on the left-hand panel. (e.g. 10.0.0.11) Select the drive within the share; in my case I am using M Drive. Then click Add.

You should now have access to the drive you added even through reboots. To test this, reboot your Mac and open finder. If you can still see (for example) 10.0.0.11, it has successfully been added.

Notes:

If you are prompted to add the credentials to Keychain, feel free to do so. It may make frequent access less annoying over reboots, etc.

Want to add the drive to your desktop? Open finder, navigate to the top left of the screen and click "Finder" then "Preferences" and check the "Connected servers" box. Now when you click on a folder such as MM Shared Data (seen below) you will get a drive icon on your desktop with the same name and access!