Mac OS X support for connecting to shared Windows
folders is turned on by default, so connecting your Mac to a Windows PC
on your network and selecting a shared folder requires no prep work on
your part.
How you go about
making the connection depends on whether your Mac “sees” the Windows PC.
To check this, switch to Finder, and then do one of the following:
In the Sidebar, open the Shared section and look for an icon for the Windows PC.
Choose Go, Network (or press Shift+Command+K) and use the Network window to look for an icon for the Windows PC.
Connecting to a Seen Windows PC
If you see an icon for the Windows PC, follow these steps to connect to it:
1. | Open the Windows PC icon.
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2. | Click Connect As. Mac OS X displays the dialog box shown in Figure 1.
Figure 1. When you connect to the Windows PC, you need to provide a username and password for an account on the PC.
Note
If you don’t know
the username and password of an account on the Windows PC, select the
Guest option instead. This gives you read-only access to the Windows
PC’s shared folders.
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3. | Select the Registered User option.
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4. | Type a username and password for an account on the Windows PC.
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5. | Click to activate the Remember This Password in My Keychain check box.
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6. | Click Connect. Mac OS X presents a list of the shared folders on the Windows PC, as shown in Figure 2.
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7. | Select
the folder you want to mount, and then click OK. Mac OS X mounts the
shared folder in Finder and displays the folder’s contents.
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Connecting to an Unseen Windows PC
If your Windows PC doesn’t
show up in the Sidebar or the Network window, first make sure it’s
turned on and not in sleep mode. If you still don’t see it, follow these
steps to make the connection:
1. | In Finder, choose Go, Connect to Server (or press Command+K). The Connect to Server dialog box appears.
Tip
You can also
right-click (or Control+click if you have a one-button mouse) the Finder
icon in the Dock and then click Connect to Server.
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2. | In the Server Address text box, type smb://WindowsPC, where WindowsPC is either the name of the Windows computer you want to connect to or its IP address. See Figure 3 for an example.
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3. | If
you want to save this address as a favorite (for example, if you plan
on connecting to the Windows PC regularly), click the Add icon (+) to
insert the address in the Favorite Servers list (again, see Figure 3 for some examples).
Tip
Rather than saving
the address as a favorite, you can click the Recent Servers icon (it’s
the one to the right of the Add icon) and then click the server you want
from the list that appears.
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4. | Click Connect. Your Mac prompts you for the credentials of a user account on the Windows PC.
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5. | Select the Registered User option.
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6. | Type a username and password for an account on the Windows PC.
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7. | Click to activate the Remember This Password in My Keychain check box.
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8. | Click Connect. Your Mac displays a list of the Windows PC’s shared folders.
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9. | Select
the folder you want to mount, and then click OK. Mac OS X mounts the
shared folder in Finder and displays the folder’s contents.
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Working with the Windows PC’s Shared Folders
When you first connect
to a Windows share, Mac OS X mounts the shared folder in Finder and
displays the folder’s contents, as shown in Figure 4.
You can then work with the folder’s contents just like any other shared
network folder (assuming, of course, that your Mac has compatible
applications installed).
To switch to a different shared folder on the Windows PC, you have two choices:
In the Finder’s Sidebar, click the icon for the Windows PC.
In
Finder, select Go, Network (or press Shift+Command+K) to open the
Network window, and then double-click the icon for the Windows PC.
Either way, Mac OS X displays the PC’s shared folders, as shown in Figure 5. Open the folder you want to work with.
Unmounting a Windows Shared Folder
When you’ve completed your work with the Windows PC, you can unmount the PC by using either of the following techniques:
In the Finder’s Sidebar, click the Eject icon that appears to the right of the icon for the Windows PC (see Figure 5).
In
Finder, select Go, Network (or press Shift+Command+K) to open the
Network window, double-click the icon for the Windows PC, and then click
the Disconnect button.
Backing Up Mac Data to a Windows Shared Folder
Besides working with the
files on a Windows share in a Mac OS X application, you can use a
Windows 7 share to store Mac OS X backups. This is handy if you don’t
have a second hard drive attached to your Mac, or if your backups are
too big to burn to a DVD. The easiest way to do this in Mac OS X is to
use the Disk Utility to archive a folder or the entire system to an
image file on a Windows 7 share. Here’s how it’s done:
1. | In Windows 7, create a share to store the Mac OS X backup.
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2. | Follow the steps given earlier in this article to mount the new share in Mac OS X.
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3. | Click the Finder icon in the Dock.
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4. | Select Applications, Utilities, and then double-click Disk Utility. Mac OS X launches the Disk Utility application.
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5. | If you want to back up your entire system, click Macintosh HD in the Disk Utility window.
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6. | Select File, New, and then select either Disk Image from Folder or Disk Image from disk (Macintosh HD), where disk is the name of your Mac’s hard disk.
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7. | If
you selected Disk Image from Folder, the Select Folder to Image dialog
box appears. Select the folder you want to back up, and then click
Image.
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8. | In the New Image dialog box, use the Save As text box to edit the filename, if desired.
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9. | Select the Windows share that you mounted in step 2. Figure 6 shows an example that will save the image to the Backups folder on the mounted share named D on PAULSPC.
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10. | Click
Save. Mac OS X creates the disk image on the Windows 7 share.
(Depending on the amount of data you’re archiving, this may take several
hours.)
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11. | When the image creation is done, select Disk Utility, Quit Disk Utility.
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