May 04, 2012  1) Mounting the Network Drive. If you’re already familiar with mapping a network drive in Mac OS X you can skip the first part of this and go straight to System Preferences in the second section. From the OS X desktop, pull down the “Go” menu and select “Connect to Server”. Sep 06, 2019  Download the relevant macOS or OS X installer from Apple, then use Terminal to create a USB installer you can boot up from. Or use the OS X installation disc that came with your machine — or buy a new one — to boot up and install OS X on your Mac’s hard drive. Related: How to downgrade from macOS Mojave to macOS High Sierra.

1. Mount A Drive Mac Terminal
2. Mounting Drive From Terminal Mac Os X
3. Mount Drive From Terminal Mac

I love my Mac environment, from using macOS to continuity, to iCloud, it allows for me to be able to have a flexible workflow. Whether I'm working on my Mac mini at the start of my day in my office or changing to my back deck using my MacBook Pro in the afternoon, macOS's features allow it to happen since all of my files are accessible to me via iCloud. But iCloud can't help with very large video files, Photo libraries, or Final Cut Pro libraries. Local disk space is what you need to rely on.

Running out of local disk space

Apple making Macs more appliance-like have the major drawback of not being able to install larger drives when you need more disk space. Apple has bet big on using dongled peripherals but that too has its limits (my poor Mac mini has no free TB3 nor USB ports left).

So how can you get more working space without having to buy a brand new Mac with the disk capacities you require? Depending on the type of work you're doing, you can probably connect a network drive and use it like you would locally. Here's how.

Networked drives

Mount A Drive Mac Terminal

A networked drive can range from a specialized appliance that offers data redundant storage such as a Synology Diskstation to a lone PC that has a shared folder visible on the network. If you plan on running your application off of files on a networked drive, you'll be limited to the bandwidth of the networked device.

Accessing Pages files, PDFs, and general text-based documents, a WiFi or 1 gigabit wired ethernet connection might be enough for you.

You could run FCP libraries from that type of ethernet connection or even WiFi, but in reality, you're going to have a bad time. The speed is much too slow.

If you need networked access to very large files, you'll need faster network speeds. For example, a new Mac mini has the ability to be attached with a Cat6 wire to your network at 10-gigabit speeds. Your networked files would be accessible at near HDD speeds (not SSD speeds mind you). So plan accordingly for your requirements.

You can get more information on how to share your files on a network from a Mac.

Making permanent connections

Once you've set up a networked drive or device, you can have your Mac attach to it each time you log in. Here's how.

1. From the Mac you want to mount a networked drive, start System Preferences.
2. Select Users &Groups.

3. Click Login Items.

4. Click +.
5. Navigate to your networked Server.
6. Highlight the share you'd like to have automatically mount.
7. Click Add.

Now each time you log in, that remote drive will be mounted.

Making the extra disk space usable

Now that you have the network drive permanently mounted, you can assign your various programs to use that location for default file storage. Typically, the mount will be in /Volumes/NameOfShareYouSelected. So for example, if you want to open a new Photo Library from the networked location, do the following.

1. Option-Click Photos.
2. Click Create New.
3. Navigate to your Mounted Drive.
4. Click Ok.

Now you'll have a Photo Library running from your remote drive no longer using local disk space.

Some extras

If you're really in need of freeing up local disk space, you can also set up Symbolic Links in your home folder to have all of your documents, downloads, music, etc, run from the remote disk. Note that these types of customized home folders should only be used if you use a stationary Mac like a Mac mini or an iMac.

Final thoughts

With the sort of experience I'm having with maxing out my Mac mini's Thunderbolt 3 ports, I'd be lying if said I wasn't worried about Apple's upcoming Mac Pro that is rumored to be 'modular'. Will it be limited also to dongles or only Apple-approved expansion modules? Probably. Swapping in a 2 TB HDD will always be cheaper than buying an Apple certified 2TB expansion HDD with an Apple-branded modular enclosure. That being said, hopefully, there will still be a way to make your Mac computing flexible to fit your needs. Let us know your thoughts in the comments.

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apple implemented a mount script called 'mount_afp' located in /sbin. sadly they got no man-page for it, so i cannot imagine what they mean with -o [option]...

mount_afs, mount_nfs, mount_ufs, etc. come from the BSD world. mount(1) is just a wrapper that calls one of these based on how you've set the '-t' flag. It's there for conveinence's sake.
Chris

mount_afp is a program launched by mount when specified witht the afp type. I'd suppose the options are the same as the mount options (for example, read-only access, etc.). From the man page for mount:
If the type is not one of the internally known types, mount will
attempt to execute a program in /sbin/mount_XXX where XXX is re-
placed by the type name. For example, nfs filesystems are mount-
ed by the program /sbin/mount_nfs.
HTH.

mount_afs, mount_nfs, mount_ufs, etc. come from the BSD world. mount(1) is just a wrapper that calls one of these based on how you've set the '-t' flag. It's there for conveinence's sake.
Chris

This is a GREAT tip. The only problem I'm having with it is that it doesn't seem to allow the finder to 'see' the volumes. I have tried messing with the privleges and owner using chown and chmod, but nothing seems to allow me to view the file server in the finder and have it show up like a server would if I mounted it through the finder. Does anyone have any ideas on how to make this happen? I've tried various combinations of chown and chmod, but to no avail.
Thanks
Eric

Run 'disktool -r' after mounting the AFP volume. This causes the Disk Arbitration system
to refresh its volume list, which then causes the Finder to update.

Thanks to Xil for the missing piece!!! now I have a little script that rudimentarily allows me to mount my local server. Theoretically, this could be put in Startup items and run automatically, though I'm planning on adding some checking to make sure that the server is not already mounted. (Right now its blind setup and will give errors). At any rate, I thought I'd pass it on to anyone who might be interested. Basically, this is a perl script that can be created by naming it according to the server you attach to (mine is called 'homemount' .) So, copy the following, then go to the unix command line, type pico homemount, do a paste, change the variables appropriately, save and quit, do a 'chmod +x homemount' , and you should be able to load that server with one command. (since it is a bad idea to hard code your server password in, the program prompts you for that)
I'll repost later when I get around to adding in all the checking that probably should be here, but if anyone else wants to do it, I'd be grateful.
best,
Eric
script follows
#!/usr/bin/env perl
##script mounts server volumes
##all variables are right now defined statically, except server password
##which is passed as argument
##from unix command line
## mountserver.pl _serverpassword_
###
###
$server_pass=@ARGV[0];
$local_mount_point='/Volumes/server-drive';
$local_user='eric';
$local_group='admin';
$server_user='eric';
$server_mountpoint='/server';
$server_ip='10.0.2.5';
$server_volume='server';
system ('sudo mkdir $local_mount_point');
system ('sudo chown $local_user:$local_group $local_mount_point');
system ('chmod +rwx $local_mount_point');
system ('sudo mount -t afp afp://$server_user:$server_pass@$server_ip/$server_volume $local_mount_point');
system ('disktool -r');

To add to this great hint, the above examples mount the remote volume as root, and as available to everyone.
Note that you don't have to do it this way.
For example, you could mount a remote volume that'd be only accessible by yourself.
here's how to do this with a directory called disk that's at the root of your home directory.
mkdir disk
mount -t afp afp://user:pass@ip.adress.server/volume_to_mount ~/disk
see how there is no sudo involved in the mount command.
Here, I get a few kextload warnings, but don't mind them.
PS the non-accessibility of ~/disk depends on the permission you've set to your home directory ;-)

Mounting Drive From Terminal Mac Os X

I tested this hint to mount AFP Volumes of OS9 Mac via terminal:
% cd ~
% mkdir ~/afptemp
% mount_afp -i afp://at_node@xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx/Volume_name ~/afptemp
at the promt type password, no password type enter; then:
% cd ~/afptemp
% ls
you can see the files of Volume_name, to unmount:
% cd ..
% umount ~/afptemp
Attention: ~/afptemp will be deteted.
Example:
% mount_afp afp://pippo@192.168.0.25/Macintosh%20HD ~/afptemp
where 'at_name' can be found with atlookup command:
% atlookup
ff94.f9.30 pippo:Multi-User Client
ff94.f9.04 pippo:Workstation
ff94.f9.04 pippo:ShareWayIP
ff94.f9.f8 pippo:AFPServer

Mount Drive From Terminal Mac

I can't get any of this to work. It looks like it works (I don't get any errors or anything), but nothing shows up. No connections. :-(