Mounting multiple network drives in Mac OSX

Posted: September 20, 2011 in Information Technology

Accessing network shares on Mac is simple, but what if someone wants multiple shares with quick access to them on their desktop? In my experience, this can get a little tricky.

Multiple instances of Finder

I setup the drives to mount at startup, but each drive opens a separate instance of Finder after login. I found quite a few people with the same issue and a pile of workarounds from native Mac OS settings to commands in terminal. None of these worked for me, so I wrote my own script.

Write your own script for OSX

Connect to the server and login with the user’s domain credentials, saving them on the keychain.

• Do not mount the drives in the OS.
• Do not set any drives to load at startup through account preferences.

Instead, go to Applications > Utilities and open AppleScript Editor.  Use the following code for each share you want to mount:

tell application "Finder"
mount volume "smb://(server name)/(share name)"
end tell

Mounting multiple shares

If you have multiple shares to mount, use the same 3 lines (separated by line breaks) for each new share.

• Save the script as an application.
• Go to account preferences and under login items select the script to boot up at login.

Now when you login, your drives should show up on your desktop as icons instead of opening Finder windows. If your drives aren’t showing on your desktop, go to Finder Preferences and select Connected servers to appear on the desktop.