How to map network drives on NAS? Win11 and Mac are mounted into Z drive in two steps, no more red cross after restart

A few days ago, a colleague came to me and asked me why the movies in your NAS are on a Z drive on your computer. You can drag them by clicking on them, but I have to open the browser and upload files to Synology backend every day. I was stunned when he asked. I have been using this operation for three years and have long regarded it as "an extra hard drive of the computer itself." This thing is called mapped network drive in Windows. I have configured it on Feiniu and Synology, and I have also struggled with mounting it on Mac. Write it down so you don’t have to spend half an hour stuck on your username like I did.

Let’s clarify one thing first: What is mapped is the shared folder, not the entire NAS.

When many people hear "mapping" for the first time, they think it means turning the entire NAS into a disk in the computer. no. What you actually mount is a shared folder that has been created on the NAS. For example, there is a shared folder called video on my Synology DS220+, and it is called movie on the Feiniu N100. The Z drive on the computer refers to it, but it actually only corresponds to this one folder. The drive letter is just a shortcut, the data is still in the NAS, and there is no copy on the computer.

So the first step is not to do it on the computer, but to go back to the NAS and confirm the two things.: Have the shared folders been created and the SMB service turned on? Synology turns on SMB in "File Services" in the control panel, and Feiniu turns on the SMB switch in the system settings. Take a look at the account permissions at the same time. Don't go to the computer to fill in the account and then remember that the permissions have not been granted. If this area is blocked, it will be useless to fill in the address later. You can read this article first. The relationship between storage pools, storage spaces and shared folders Think through it.

Windows 11 maps Z drive, I click on it

The one I have is Windows 11 23H2, and the IP of the NAS is fixed to 192.168.31.11 . Open "This PC" and click "Map network drive" with the three dots at the top. I am used to choosing Z as the drive letter, and fill in the address starting with two backslashes in the folder column.:

\\192.168.31.11\video

Don’t rush to finish it yet. There is a checkmark for "Connect using other credentials" below, which needs to be checked, otherwise it will default to using the current Windows account and Synology will not recognize it at all. After clicking Finish, the account and password box will pop up. At this time, see how to write the user name in the next step.

After mapping is completed, there will be an additional Z drive in the resource manager. I dragged an 11G 4K movie from the computer, and the Gigabit wired speed was around 112MB/s, while using WiFi 5, the speed was basically around 40MB/s. This number is related to the network, not because the hard disk is full. You can check it separately later if you want to make it faster. How to use SMB multi-channel superposition rate on NAS dual network ports .

After mapping, there is still a place that is quite scary.: The capacity displayed on the Z drive is not the capacity of all hard drives on the NAS, but the remaining storage space where the shared folder is located. My Synology video folder is on a 3.6T storage pool, and the Z drive shows that 3.4T is available, which is basically the same as what I see in the browser background. When you see that the Z drive is "almost full", first go to the NAS backend to see if other folders are eating up the space. Don't just insert a second drive into the NAS.

The account keeps saying "Access Denied", 90% of the time it's because the username format is incorrect.

I stepped into this trap the most unjustly. The username I created in Synology is daniel, and I filled in daniel honestly when the Windows pop-up window appeared, but the result was that it kept saying "Access Denied." Later I realized that Windows by default treats Daniel as a local account, not a NAS account. The correct way to write it is to include the host name of the NAS and write it as:

DS220\daniel

Or you can connect using IP, but the account number must still be written in the form of "machine name\user name". The user name I created on Feiniu is fnuser. When connecting, just write "FNOS\fnuser". Don't underestimate this bar. If the format is wrong, you will keep spinning in circles and get an error.

There are also older machines that will hit the SMB version. Windows 10 and 11 use SMB2 and SMB3 by default. Synology and Feiniu are both enabled now, so there is basically no need to touch them. But if you still have a Windows 7 at home, it likes to try SMB1 first. Synology has turned off SMB1 for safety reasons, and it will prompt "The specified server cannot perform the requested operation." Go to the NAS file service to confirm that SMB2 or above is enabled. Don't reopen SMB1. That protocol has many loopholes and the gain outweighs the loss.

If you have saved old passwords before, Windows will keep trying them again. Go to the Control Panel and search for "Credential Manager", click "Windows Credentials", and 192.168.31.11 Delete that one and remap it. The command line can also do this:

net use Z: \\192.168.31.11\video /user:DS220\daniel * /persistent:yes

The asterisk allows you to enter the password after pressing Enter, and the password will not be left in the command line history. Clear out a bunch of old connections:

By the way, after changing the NAS user password, Windows will not automatically update, so you should try with the old password. Many people think that the permissions have been changed, but in fact it is just that the credentials are old. Deleting the old entries in the credential manager and reconnecting will save time than going to the NAS to repeatedly change permissions.

net use * /delete

If the permissions are still not cleared, go back to the NAS to see if this account can enter this shared folder. Check the specifics. How to open a separate account for each person with NAS shared folder permissions Check, don't guess on Windows.

After restarting, there will be a red cross on the drive letter. Click on it first. Most of the time, the drive is not lost.

The first day after mapping was fine, but the next day when I turned on the Z disk, there were multiple red crosses on it, and it looked like the disk was missing. Don't be in a hurry to delete and rebuild. The red cross just means "the connection is not established now", not "the disk is broken". In most cases, the network is not ready for a few seconds after booting. Windows sees the drive letter first and makes a cross when it is not connected. If you just double-click the Z drive, it will usually reconnect.

For a while, I had to manually click on the TV at home every morning, which was very annoying. Later, I changed both the NAS and computer to static IPs, and the red cross almost never appeared again. Because the machine name resolution was slow in the past, reconnecting after changing to IP is much faster. When mapping, remember to check "Reconnect at login", plus /persistent:yes , let it try automatically when it starts up. If it doesn't work, just create a scheduled task and delay executing it for 30 seconds after logging in. net use command, which is more stable than starting automatically at boot. If you can't connect even by double-clicking and it prompts "Network path not found", then you need to check according to the fault line, from Windows all the way to the NAS, refer to this article Five pitfalls when the computer cannot connect to NAS shared folders .

If you want to see how many drive letters are currently connected, type in the command line:

net use

It will list the Z drive connected \192.168.31.11ideo , the status is "OK" or "Unavailable". I often use this command when troubleshooting people in the company. It is faster than opening the resource manager to take inventory of disks one by one, and it will not miss those hidden old connections.

How to mount the same folder on Mac, two steps are enough

Mac is a little easier than Windows. Open the Finder, select "Connect to Server" in the top menu "Go", and fill in the address bar:

smb://192.168.31.11/video

After pressing Enter, enter the account and password, fill in your Synology username and password, and remember to check "Remember this password in my keychain". After the connection is successful, the video location will appear on the left side of the Finder. If you want to automatically hang up after booting, go to the system settings to find the login item, drag the mounted volume into it, and it will connect automatically after restarting.

The macOS Sonoma I use will occasionally get the message "Unable to connect to the server" when booting up. Click Wait, go to the Finder and click the video on the left again. Don't put the same folder with two names on Mac. It's easy to see two copies in Time Machine or backup tools, which makes cleaning up troublesome. Windows and Mac can share the same file at the same time, but if both users write the same file, it is easy for versions to fight.

Don't map these situations. It's more comfortable to use shortcuts or WebDAV directly.

Mapping network drives is best for people who "open NAS files on their computer every day." If you only upload it once in a while, you don’t need to occupy a drive letter, just enter it directly in the address bar of the resource manager. \\192.168.31.11\video Just hit Enter and close after reading. Don’t count on this mapping for mobile phone and external network access, it only works well in the local area network. If people want to connect to the NAS outside, they have to use FN Connect, QuickConnect, or the intranet penetration route. It has nothing to do with the drive letter.

There is another situation where I advise you to quit.: There are so many shared folders on your NAS in your home that they are all mapped to drive D, E, and F. After two months, you won’t be able to tell which one is which. It is better to only mount the most commonly used root directory and divide it into folders instead of splitting the NAS into a bunch of drive letters.

There are two other words that are easily confused: Mapping and synchronization. Mapping just gives you a channel, and the original files are still on the NAS. ； Synchronization is to copy the files to the computer, and then transfer them back to the NAS after the computer has made changes. What you want is to "open directly like a local disk", just map ； What you want is "to have backups on both sides and still be able to work even if the network is disconnected", then you should install a synchronization disk. Separating these two can save a lot of detours.

Leave a final message: First check whether the NAS shared folder and SMB are turned on. For Windows, fill in the IP address, check "Connect using other credentials", and add the machine name prefix to the user name. For Mac, fill in the smb:// address directly. ； Double-click the red cross before restarting. This process is basically the same for Synology, Feiniu, and QNAP, so don’t be fooled by the different names on the interface.