What are shared network drives?

Students, faculty, and staff at Saint Mary's College are given access to various shared network drives, depending on their department and materials needed. The file server for shared network drives is mavis. Shared network drives are accessible from any networked computer on campus. All students, faculty, and staff have access to the shared network drive named SMC (also known as the P: drive). Several folders will be visible when you open the SMC network drive:

• Courses - course-specific items
• Departments - departments that have shared accounts
• Software Distribution - includes software that Saint Mary's has licensed for campus-wide use, such as the College-provided virus protection software
• Student Groups - student groups that have shared accounts

For each department/group that has an account on SMC, a folder will be visible. All members of the Saint Mary's community will be able to see the listing of folders for departments/groups. The contents of the folders in SMC will be visible only to the individuals with permission to view them. Department/group accounts may have a subfolder named Public that will be accessible to all members of the Saint Mary's community. The decision to offer items in a Public folder is up to each individual department/group.

You may also need to connect to personal network drives. Instructions for mounting your personal network drive (which only you have access to) are available on the here.

Instructions for computers running macOS versions macOS 12 (Monterey), macOS 13 (Ventura), and macOS 14 (Sonoma):

1. While in the Finder (you know you're in the Finder if you look up at the menu bar and it says Finder next to the Apple Menu - if you're not in the Finder, click on the desktop), go to the Finder menu and select Preferences... or Settings....

2. Click on the General icon.

3. In the area below Show these items on the Desktop: check the box next to Connected servers. (You may want to check the boxes for Hard disks, External disks, and CDs, DVD, and iPods, too.)

4. Close the Finder Preferences window.

5. While in the Finder, go to the Go menu and select Connect to Server....

6. Next to Server Address: type in smb://mavis.saintmarys.edu/SMC and click Connect.



Note: if you wanted to mount a specific folder on the SMC shared network drive, you can do so. For example, if you wanted to mount the Public folder inside the Infotech folder, which is in the Departments folder on the SMC shared drive, you would type in smb://mavis.saintmarys.edu/SMC/Departments/Infotech/Public - if a folder has a space in the name, please include that space in the path name.

7. You will be prompted for a username and password to connect to the server. Type in your user name and your password and then click Connect. (This is your Saint Mary's user name and the password you use to check your Saint Mary's e-mail.) If you are already connected to your personal network drive on fs1, you may not be prompted for your password.

8. The network drive icon will appear on your desktop. A window will open to display the contents of the shared network drive.

9. To easily remount a network drive:

   1. Select the drive by clicking on its icon once to highlight it.

   2. Click down once on the icon of the drive and drag it to the right side of the dock at the bottom of the screen. You should see icons in the dock moving around to make room for the new icon to appear.

   3. Let go of the mouse button to "drop" the icon in the dock.

   4. When you shut down or log out of your computer, it will disconnect from any mounted network drives. To reconnect to the shared network drive when you turn your Mac back on, click once on the icon in the dock of the shared network drive. You will then be prompted for your Saint Mary's login and password and the drive will mount.