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Persistent Mapped network drives on Mac OSX (Mavericks) with laptops?

Newbie to Macs in a windows domain, so I have a question:

I currently have a Macbook joined to our Windows domain and have connected to our fileserver via SMB. I even placed the network share in the startup item under Login items to automatically reconnect.

Here's my question:
If the Macbook stays in our office's wireless connection, everytime it reboots, it reconnects to our fileserver, which is great. But when they are taken home, it is a different story. When powered on away from our network, there will be an error screen saying that the laptop cannot connect to the SMB shares and then there will be a button to Disconnect. If pressed, but drive mapping is gone and must be manually readded once they get back in the office.

Is there a better way for my users to automatically connect to our fileserver, while having the freedom to go in and out of the office without having to manually re-connect?

Thanks!
Mac OS XApple NetworkingApple OS

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JA Network

8/22/2022 - Mon
valmatic

When you go back to the start up entries, and click the hide option so there is no dialog box when the mac boots does that seem to help.
JA Network

ASKER
Tried that. Didn't quite work.

I had the drives mapped while in the office, and then took the laptop home. After restarting the laptop, an error came up saying it could not connect to the network drives (obviously), but after boot up, the mappings were then gone.

I have it set so that Connected Servers shows up on my desktop, and now the connected drives are gone (because I'm out of the office without VPN).

My problem is now that when I go back into the office, I'll have to manually reconnect to the servers. Is there a way to make this process better?

For example, in Windows, if I cannot connect to the servers, there will be a red X saying the drive is unavailable, but the drive mapping will still be there. Once I get back in the office, the red X goes away and connectivity is restored. Easy for the end user.

Whats the best practice to deal with these network drives when computers are in and out of the network?
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didn't get much from the community. had to create my own solution
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