This article will show you how to connect to your Personal Drive (P:), your department's Shared Drive (S:), or your class's Courses drive (X:) on a SOU-managed Macintosh computer.

Step 1 - Connect to Server

With Finder selected (you can do this easily by clicking anywhere on your desktop), click on the Go item in the menu bar along the top of your screen and then select Connect to Server from the dropdown menu. You can also use the keyboard shortcut Command + K.

Step 2 - Enter the Server Address

Personal Drive (P:)

To connect to your P: drive, enter the following path into the Server Address field: smb://users.sou.edu/users/<first letter of your username>/<username>, then click on the + sign to add it to your Favorite Servers list (to save yourself the burden of having to remember the path in the future), and then click on Connect.

Shared Drive (S:)

To connect to your S: drive, enter the following path into the Server Address field: smb://depts.sou.edu/depts, then click on the + sign to add it to your Favorite Servers list (to save yourself the burden of having to remember the path in the future), and then click on Connect.

Courses Drive (X:)

To connect to your X: drive, enter the following path into the Server Address field: smb://courses.sou.edu/courses, then click on the + sign to add it to your Favorite Servers list (to save yourself the burden of having to remember the path in the future), and then click on Connect.

Step 3 - Locating Your Network Drives After Connecting

After connecting to your network drives, you'll want to know how to locate them on your computer.

Desktop

Hopefully this setting is already enabled on your SOU-managed Macintosh. If so, you will find blue icons on your desktop corresponding to the network drives you've connected to.

If you do not see these icons after connecting, you can turn on this feature by clicking anywhere on your desktop (to change the menu bar back to Finder), clicking on the Finder item in the menu bar, then selecting Preferences. In the Finder Preferences window that pops up, select the General tab (looks like a light switch) and check the box next to Connected servers in the "Show these items on the desktop" list. You can then close the Finder Preferences window and the network drive icons should appear on your desktop.

Within Finder

You can also locate your connected network drives from within a Finder window. The easiest way to do that is to bring up the Computer view, which will show you all of the drives connected to your computer. You can do this by giving focus to Finder (click anywhere on your desktop), selecting the Go item from the menu bar, then selecting Computer from the dropdown menu. You can also use the keyboard shortcut Shift + Command + C.

This will bring up the Computer view, where you will find blue icons representing your network drives.