Issues with disconnected drives are a common theme with Synology, as reported by users online, regardless of which operating system is being used. There are fixes for these issues, but I’d like to propose another approach which uses a completely different protocol and achieves a superior result, in my opinion. This solution should work for you, unless your computer has limited local storage space (in which case the only way to access network folders is a mapped drive). The alternative solution is Synology Drive. You can find Synology Drive in the Synology Package Center.
Synology Drive
If you have used Microsoft One Drive, Google Drive or Dropbox before, then Synology Drive will be familiar territory for you. All of these products provide a mirrored set of folders between your computer and the cloud, except that Synology Drive syncs to the private cloud on your DiskStation. Synology Drive is superior to a mapped drive for a number of reasons:
- You access files on a local drive instead of a slower network drive.
- Read/write times are faster.
- Synology Drive then syncs the local file to the network as a background task, while you get on with other work.
- The connection to the server is more stable than the connection to a mapped drive, with none of the issues that arise between Mac OS / Windows and the network protocols which cause connections to suddenly fail.
Some PCs will map using the server name, while others require the LAN IP address. Some will accept one for a while, then stop working and require the other. Fixing this is just too much hassle.
Unless you set up a VPN, then remote access to a mapped drive is not possible. Synology Drive works over QuickConnect so all you need is an Internet connection. If you don’t have an Internet connection, you can work on a local copy and Synology Drive will sync when a connection is available. Synology Drive enables you to keep versions of a file – which is useful if you need to roll back to an earlier version. You can sync to your private folders or to team folders that are shared with others, and remote users around the world.
Note: When you set up the Drive syncs, make sure you reduce the number of versions held by the server. For example, if you sync 1TB of data with the number of versions set to default, you will use up a lot more disc space. If you have a local storage space, it’s better if you use Synology Drive instead of a mapped drive.
Windows: I had recurring problems with broken connections when I mapped the drive using the server name. These problems disappeared when I mapped the drive using the LAN IP address instead. The label is not as meaningful, but it works.
Mac OS: My home is an Apple-free zone so this section uses solutions suggested by others. Below you can see 3 different solutions for Synology mapped drives that keep disconnecting.
- 1 Mac OS Solution
You can write a script in Apple Script Editor. Then make it an app in Script Editor and then add it to your login items in System Preferences/Users & Groups:
tell application “Finder”
mount volume
“smb://UsernName:Password@NameOfYourNAS/ShareName”
end tell
Each time you login, this will run and mount each drive in the list.
- 2 Mac OS Solution
You can also set up a SMB/AFP mounted drive in the user start up items. That’s native to the OS and, as long as the connection has been previously connected with correct credentials in keychain, it will work as long as on the same network. For users that are not as familiar with the drive mapping process, you can set this method as default.
- 3 Mac OS Solution
Mark Ealey suggested this video on setting up the connection and making it persistent.
This post was updated on Sunday / September 8th, 2019 at 11:45 PM