I have NAS box that I want to use to store my iTunes music. Even though I know the IP address to the NAS, I always have issues trying to connect to it from my mac running OS X 10.5.4. The only way that I have been able to find and connect to is is when one of my Windows machines is turned on at which point I can see them from within the finder as a shared folder. Can anyone suggest an easier way to find and connect to the NAS without turning any of the Window boxes on?

TIA

Javier

You can use the NAS's IP address to connect to it from the Mac.

What protocols does the NAS support? SMB/CIFS? AFP? AppleTalk? NFS? FTP?

It supports FTP, SMB, CIFS, as well as NFS Network protocol. The box in question is from the Promise Technology Inc model number NS4300n. It is connected via an ethernet cable to my Linksys wireless router.

Javier

Thanks for the hint. I used the "Connect" to server command and fed it the IP address. It asked me for my user id and password and I was in.

Thank a million!

Javier

i have a similar problem im using a freecom nas drive i cant get it to show up on the network using my mac mini 10.6.2 snow leopard even trying the ip address in connect to dont find it but typing the ip in safari it connects to it so i no its there any ideas

In the "Connect to Server..." dialog, you can specify just an IP address, which will try to connect via AFP by default. If your NAS doesn't support AFP, then you're out of luck using that method.

Instead, prefix the IP address with a protocol that the NAS supports. If it supports Samba (Windows-style) file sharing, try either of the following:

smb://ipaddressofnas
cifs://ipaddressofnas
If it supports FTP, likewise you would use:

ftp://ipaddressofnas
...where "ipaddressofnas" is the IP address of the NAS.

i have a similar problem im using a freecom nas drive i cant get it to show up on the network using my mac mini 10.6.2 snow leopard even trying the ip address in connect to dont find it but typing the ip in safari it connects to it so i no its there any ideas

Read this blog's SMB fix for 10.6.3 (http://splatdot.com/fixing-snow-leopard-10-6-3-samba-write-access/) if you are using SMB to speak to the NAS.