You can mount and unmount drives, volumes, and disks from the command line of MacOS and Mac OS X. For many users, the easiest way to unmount a drive in Mac is to either just drag a volume into the Trash, use the eject keys, disconnect the drive, or use one of the force eject methods.
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A network drive, also known as a NAS (network attached storage) drive, is a storage device that connects to a home or office network instead of your computer. Some of the advantages of this are obvious: for example, you can get access files from a smartphone, tablet, or computer without having to plug the drive in.
Other, perhaps less obvious, positives of NAS include things like automated backups and the ability to mirror data on two drives. In other words, NAS offers a flexible and protected way to manage Mac storage that’s far beyond that of standard external hard drives. Read along to learn how to map a network drive and avoid some common NAS mistakes.
- Now i go to university and to access our file storage on our university network account we have an ftp address we can go to ftp://[email protected] In windows I used to be able to 'Add Network Place Type that address' and it would apear in my computer every time i logged into my computer.
- You can mount a remote ftp but the folder is only 'read'! This is the same procedure that you can do with Finder (CMD+K). Finally i can rsyncthe mounted volume ftp on a local folder on my Mac: rsync -av -progress -delete -exclude='.' -exclude='.' -exclude='folder' /Volumes/mountftp /Users/username/Desktop/backupftp.
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What is a network drive used for?
Whether it’s populated or diskless, has one bay or more than five, a network drive is typically used as an alternative to cloud storage. It may be easy to drag and drop files to something like Google Drive or Dropbox, but just a bit of drive mapping can make using a network drive a fantastic cloud alternative.
Some of network drive’s key advantages include:
- Better control over your files
- More security features than cloud services
- Flexibility without compromising on privacy
- Being used by multiple users across multiple devices
Map network drive on macOS (one-time)
Nowadays, most NAS devices are seriously easy to map. Let’s say that you’ve been working on a document in your home office but have just remembered a key fact that you want to include. Time to make a quick edit from your wife’s laptop before you forget about it!
Network drive access can be obtained in three simple steps, provided you don’t mind having to repeat those steps if the connection drops, you restart your Mac, or the device is disconnected:
- In Finder, either hit Command+K to bring up “Connect to Server” or click Go > Connect to Server
- Enter the path of the network drive you’re trying to map (e.g. smb://192.168.1.300/shared/Files) and click Connect
- Enter your login details and password then click OK to mount the network drive
You can now access the relevant drive either via your desktop or the sidebar in Finder windows.
Map network drive on macOS (remount after reboot)
Maybe you have a server in your office with a connected network drive and want all your employees to be able to connect to it so they can collaborate on shared documents. If you want to keep a Mac connected to a network drive, even after restarting, the easiest way to do this is to follow the three steps above then add these:
- Hit the Apple menu, then System Preferences > Users & Groups
- From here, select Login Items and click + to add a new item
- Find your network drive and click Add, then close the window
Now, your network drive will be mapped and automatically remounted when you reboot your Mac. Network drives won’t, however, connect automatically if you’re using a different WiFi network.
Make a network drive accessible from Mac desktop
Depending on your settings, mounted drives may not always appear on your desktop. That’s not necessarily a problem if you don’t mind only being able to see connected servers in Finder window sidebars and open/save dialogues.
If, however, you want your NAS device to always be just one double-click away (in the same way that most people have Macintosh HD as a visible item on their desktop) just follow these steps:
- Open Finder > Preferences or click Command + to open Finder Preferences
- Click the General tab, then tick the box next to Connected servers
- Close Finder Preferences
Remount a mapped network drive with one click
Managing, or working across, multiple departments that each have their own network drive? In that case, it can be handy to create aliases of mapped network drive(s):
- Right click on any mapped NAS device on your desktop.
- Select Make Alias
This might not sound like anything all that significant but, as the subheading suggests, you can use this alias to reconnect to a network drive with one click. That can be very helpful if you need to keep jumping between different shared drives.
How to manage files with network-attached storage
Mac os x auf pc. In most cases, macOS’s default tools are sufficient for viewing, editing, and deleting files. That might change, however, if you’re using a NAS device. For example, it’s very easy to end up with a ton of duplicate files on your network drive where it’s likely you’ll be less concerned about making the most of your storage as you might be with a built in hard drive.
Gemini is a great tool for digging out any duplicate content on your drives, so you can ditch everything you no longer need while hanging onto backup documents, photos, etc.
- Open up the app and hit the giant + or drag your folder of choice into the window
- Choose from recommended locations or select a custom folder
- Push the green Scan for Duplicates button to get started
- Delete duplicate files manually or use Smart Cleanup to automate the process
For a more granular approach to file management, you might want to consider something like DCommander or Forklift. These apps both offer dual-pane file management, as well as features like batch renaming, copying, and deletion, in a more seamless way than your default Finder.
Although Forklift was designed with FTP management in mind, it’s become a favorite of network drive users because of how closely it resembles macOS. Billed as a Finder replacement app in parts of its marketing material, you won’t find an app much more native unless it comes out of Cupertino.
Mac Mount Ftp Server
Plus, actually getting started with the app is incredibly simple:
- Open up the Forklift app
- Use the left-hand panel to find the file(s) you want to move across
- Select the right-hand panel then, using the sidebar, click on your network drive
- Start moving, renaming and archiving files
If Forklift isn’t for you then you might prefer to take a look at DCommander, an approved Mac alternative of Total Commander for Windows. In addition to two side-by-side file panels that look very similar to those of Forklift, DCommander puts a wider range of commands and features (including quick file viewing, selective file unpacking, navigation history, and a great looking Dark Mode) at your fingertips without the need to leave the dual-panel display.
Both apps let you do things like mark certain drives as favorites, create and browse archives, and get previews of items. In short, they’re much like macOS’s Finder … only better. It’s difficult to overstate how much easier it becomes to manage Mac storage with dual-pane browsing until you try to organize your network drive without it!
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Effectively manage Mac storage day-to-day
Thanks to macOS, network drive mapping is a pretty simple process even if you’re not particularly tech-savvy. You might be out of luck if you’re hoping to access a NAS device from another network using standard macOS tools but, at present, that’s pretty much the only thing keeping network drives from competing with the cloud at the mainstream level.
If remote access isn’t such a concern for you and you’re using NAS as an alternative to cloud, then it’s definitely worth taking a look at programs like Forklift or DCommander to make file management easier once you’re done drive mapping, as well as Gemini to ensure that your NAS device isn’t filling up with duplicate files you don’t need.
Best of all, the software mentioned above is available for a free trial through Setapp, a collection of over 150 high-quality macOS applications from the best developers around. Manage your Mac effectively today!
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There are many FTP clients for Mac, paid, and free. I tested 7 most popular FTP clients with GUI and provided their descriptions below. I also provided upload and download speeds.
And here’s what I have found.
Captain FTP is the fastest client on Mac with an upload speed of 14.24 MB/s. It is also in the top three when it comes to downloading data. FileZilla is the quickest FTP client to download with a speed of 8.72 MB/s. The built-in command-line FTP utility is the slowest of all.
The following is the table with speed tests.
By the way, FileZilla is also the fastest free FTP client on Mac.
FTP Clients Comparison
ftp Command Line Utility
For years macOS like any other UNIX operating system had a built-in ftp utility, but things have changed when Apple decided to exclude ftp utility from the list of supported apps starting with High Sierra.
They claimed that FTP is not secure. However, it is still possible to get it if you Homebrew installed on your Mac.
How to Get FTP Utility on Mac
To install ftp in MacOS High Sierra or Mojave run following in the Terminal:
- brew install tnftp
You can also install inetutils package which includes other network utilities such telnet and FTP server in addition to FTP client, but keep in mind that some people reported problems installing inetutils on High Sierra. The way to install inetutils with Homebrew is to run:
- brew install inetutils
Now, you are ready to send and receive files over FTP protocol.
First, connect to the server:
First, connect to the server:
- ftp <servername> or ftp <username>@<servername>
and then put or get files. You can use the following commands with ftp client:
While command line ftp utility is fairly easy to use most people prefer to use apps with GUI. Most apps have dual pane designs so that users can drag and drop files from local drives to FTP server and back.
They also have features such as tabbed user interface, bookmarks support, remote file search, filename filters, and directory comparison.
FileZilla
If you ask anyone for an FTP client recommendation FileZilla will be the first that comes to anyone’s mind. This a very well known FTP client that works almost on any OS including macOS, other various flavors of Unix, and Windows.
FileZilla has two versions: free and paid Pro version for $13.99 downloadable from the App Store. The free version only supports FTP/FTPS and SFTP protocols.
In addition to those the paid version supports Amazon S3, Backblaze B2, Dropbox, Microsoft OneDrive, Google Drive, Google Cloud Storage, Microsoft Azure Blob and File Storage, WebDAV, Box, and OpenStack Swift.
Additionally, FileZilla supports stopping and resuming file transfer, allows to configure transfer speed limits and enable remote file editing.
My impression of FileZilla was not really great. Yes, it does the work, but UI is outdated and it shows all hidden files by default which is not most people want to see.
One thing I liked is that it had logs window always open because I like to know what is happening with file transfer tools, especially when working with large files.
Cyberduck
Cyberduck is definitely a step up from FileZilla in terms of UI and features. It is available on Mac and Windows and FTP, SFTP, WebDAV, Amazon S3, OpenStack Swift, Backblaze B2, Microsoft Azure & OneDrive, Google Drive and Dropbox.
It also has something called Cryptomator which can encrypt your client-side passwords and works with macOS keychain. With Cyberduck can also configure your preferred editor to edit files remotely.
Also, you can limit transfer speed from 5KB/s to 100MB/s or set it to unlimited bandwidth (that’s what I did for speed testing).
Unlike all other FTP clients, Cyberduck had only one pane so I had to use Finder as the other window to browse for the files I needed and then drag and drop from the Finder to Cyberduck window.
I don’t know if they support dual panes, but if they did it was not enabled by default and I didn’t see it in the menu options.
Cyberduck is technically free, but if you want to support the dev team you can register your instance for as little as $10 donation ($25 recommended).
Captain FTP
Captain FTP was one of two applications that were crashing after install. However, after rebooting my MacBook I was able to start it.
As the name implies it only supports FTP/S, SFTP, WebDAV, and Amazon S3 but it also has interesting features such as scheduled transfers, accelerated transfers, resuming, auto-reconnect, synchronization, changing file privileges and remote file editing.
You can also synchronize your folder and FTP site to have a backup solution.
The UI of Captain FTP was also crude and outdated like FileZilla. It even has features like Burning DVDs which make me think that the application was written a long time ago and I am a little suspicious about the future of the program as I don’t know how much the developers committed to add new features.
Captain FTP is shareware and costs $29.
Transmit
Transmit from Panic is the one that consistently praised in the Mac community for its reliability.
Mac Mount Ftp Plugin
It supports FTP, SFTP, WebDAV, Amazon S3 and 11 other cloud services, such as Backblaze B2, Box, Google Drive, DreamObjects, Dropbox, Microsoft Azure, and Rackspace Cloud Files.
Transmit includes Panic Sync, secure and fast way to sync sites. The File Sync feature adds support for local-to-local and remote-to-remote sync.
The UI was ok, especially I liked the preview pane from where you could preview the file and change file’s permissions.
You can try Transmit for free for 7 days, but then you have to pay $45 for the license. In my opinion, it’s a bit pricey.
Yummy FTP Pro
Yummy FTP Pro supports FTP/S, SFTP, and WebDAV. Other features include remote editing and file difference. The directory synchronization in Yummy FTP can do a two way Mirroring or one way (Mac to Server or Server to Mac).
Synchronization tasks can be scheduled to run once at a specific time or daily. It also has a powerful filtering capability which I didn’t see anywhere else (see the pic below).
Another powerful feature is FTP aliases. With FTP aliases you can just drop the file to a folder in the Finder and it will be automatically uploaded to an FTP site. And you can even configure to zip the file before the upload.
On the other hand, the so-called Retina UI in Yummy FTP Pro was not too impressive. Yummy FTP Pro license is $29, but I read on forums that they periodically discount their prices, so it makes sense to wait a bit for a promotion.
Forklift
![Mac Mount Ftp Mac Mount Ftp](https://cdn.cyberduck.io/img/onedrive.png)
Frankly, Forklift was the only FTP client I liked when testing. It has the best UI resembling the one of the Finder. I think I would actually prefer to use ForkLift instead of the Finder even with local drives.
ForkLift supports SFTP, FTP, WebDAV, Amazon S3, Backblaze B2, Google Drive, Rackspace CloudFiles, SMB, AFP, and NFS remote volumes. If you are a developer, you would be interested to know that they also support Git source control. Nothing fancy though, just add, commit, push and pull.
The number of features packed in ForkLift is huge. The synchronization can one-way or two-way. From the Preview panel, you can see file attributes and playback audio and video files, inspect images, PDFs, and other documents. You can do quick edits on a text file in place, both on local drives and remote servers.
Multi-Rename tool allows renaming a large number of files on your local drives or remote servers. With the tool, you can change case, replace text using regular expressions, etc. And there is much more.
A single user license is $29.95.
WebDrive
WebDrive was the last client I tested. “WebDrive is the WebDAV client with options to mount at startup and lock server files. It works the way the native Windows WebDAV redirector should work”.
It also supports SharePoint, Box, S3, Google Drive, Dropbox, and OneDrive. It also claims that it can replace the VPN.
Unfortunately, I was not able to test all of the above-mentioned on my MacBook. It was crashing as Captain FTP, but unlike the latter, it didn’t work even after a reboot.
It kept telling me that I have to install FUSE, but when I tried to install it WebDrive would crash with a cryptic message “Please check the console log for more information”. I checked the log and found that it was missing some files and I don’t think this is my fault.
Then I decided to check FUSE from their site. And I was right, WebDrive kept pushing me to the old version of FUSE which is not compatible with latest OS.
I was able to run WebDrive after installing correct tools and even mount the FTP site as a drive. But when I tried to copy the file to the mounted WebDrive drive it failed with the error.
![Mac mount ftp file Mac mount ftp file](https://i2.wp.com/www.thetechbulletin.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/Fetch.png)
I believe that I don’t have to fight with the program especially when I have half a dozen other choices, so I decided to not waste my time on WebDrive. Maybe when they fix deployment issues I can go back and revisit the software.
SFTP Clients
While FTP may be considered as a non-secure protocol similar to HTTP, there is another protocol which was always regarded as very secure: SFTP. Do not confuse SFTP and FTPS.
The latter is the same FTP that runs over TLS/SSL layer, which means the communication is encrypted and secure. SFTP runs over SSH Backup android tablet to mac. which is also encrypted and secure.
Since most businesses are moving to SFTP chances are that even if you are using FTP or FTSP now, in the near future you may be forced to SFTP.
So I decided to run SFTP speed tests for all FTP clients tested above because you will need the client which is good with both FTP and SFTP on Mac.
scp Utility
We can’t use ftp command tool for SFTP, but there is another utility on Mac which does the job: scp (stands for secure copy).
The good thing is that Apple believes that SFTP is secure enough, and they kept scp command tool, so you don’t need to go over trouble installing it with Homebrew or anything else like we did with ftp.
To upload the file with scp run following in the Terminal app:
scp <local_file_path> <user>@<server>:<path_on_server>
Since I had both ftp and sftp on the same server I added the port parameter (22 is default for SFTP) to the command:
scp -P 22 <local_file_path> <user>@<server>:<path_on_server>
Mac Mount Ftp Command
To download the file with scp to the local drive just swap source and target:
scp <user>@<server>:<path_on_server><local_file_path>
I excluded Finder and both browsers from the comparison because none of them supports SFTP. Adobe premiere pro 2020 torrent for mac. And I used scp utility as a baseline for comparison.
Which SFTP client is fastest on Mac?
So, what did I learn from SFTP speed test?
Cyberduck absolutely blew me away with both upload and download numbers. At the same time, WinSCP and Captain FTP displayed dismal performance when it comes to transferring large files via SFTP.
At first, I couldn’t believe what I saw and repeated tests again and again. If I had to guess I’d assume that the problem is with their algorithms.
Mac Mount Ftp App
When I checked what WinSCP does with Task Manager I saw that the download speed was around 4.8MB/s, so it was downloading something, but the actual data was slowly dripping.
Conclusion
If I had to choose an FTP client for my MacBook, I would go with Cyberduck. The file transmit of the app is one of the best. Additionally, Cyberduck allows saving ftp passwords in the keychain which makes them more secure. And finally, it is almost free, although donations appreciated.
Another app, Transmit from Panic, wins when it comes to the number of remote server protocols it supports, but its price is rather high. On the other hand, if I was on the market for both FTP client and Text Editor, then investing in Coda would make a lot of sense.
Mac Mount Ftp
And I already mentioned that I liked ForkLift UI a lot. Coupled with a decent performance ForkLift could be a great choice for most Mac users.