Mac Hard Drive Control App

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I am considering adding an extra drive to my Mac Mini (possibly a tower-size one like mentioned here) and keeping it permanently plugged-in, for extra space and to leave the main Macintosh HD for essential files - system apps, my Adobe apps etc. I have a 500GB hard drive, with currently 204.68GB remaining on it, but was considering using the additional drive for the other files I create.

Sleep or wake your Mac

When your Mac is asleep, it uses much less energy than when it's awake, and waking a Mac from sleep is much faster than turning it on and waiting for it to start up.

Put your Mac to sleep

  • Choose Sleep from the Apple menu .
  • On a notebook computer, close the lid.
  • Use a sleep keyboard shorcut.

Wake your Mac from sleep

  • Press a key, or click your mouse or trackpad.
  • On a notebook computer, open the lid.
  • Briefly press the power button.

Change Energy Saver settings

Choose Apple menu  > System Preferences, then click Energy Saver.


Mac notebook computer


Mac desktop computer

Availability of each setting depends on your Mac model and version of macOS.

Allow power button to put computer to sleep
Allow your Mac to sleep when you briefly press the power button.

Automatic graphics switching
Allow your Mac to automatically use its lower-power graphics chip for low-intensity tasks such as text editing. Learn more about setting graphics performance.

Battery Health
Learn about battery-health management.

Computer sleep
Set how long your Mac must be idle before it automatically goes to sleep.

Display sleep
Set how long your Mac must be idle before it automatically stops the video signal to the display and puts the display to sleep, causing it to become dark or turn off. If the display has a power indicator, it might show that the display is in low-power mode.

Enable Power Nap
Allow your Mac to perform certain tasks while sleeping, such checking email, receiving Calendar updates, updating software, or making Time Machine backups. This uses more energy than when your Mac is fully asleep, but less energy than when it's awake. Learn more about Power Nap.

Optimize video streaming while on battery power
When playing high dynamic range (HDR) video while on battery power, play the video in standard dynamic range (SDR), which uses less energy.

Prevent computer from sleeping automatically when the display is off
Prevent your Mac from sleeping when the display is turned off or goes to sleep.

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Put hard disks to sleep when possible
Allow the motor of a traditional hard disk to turn off after a period of inactivity. This doesn't affect solid-state drives (SSDs), which have no moving parts. If using a traditional disk with certain pro media apps or other apps that prefer uninterrupted access to the disk, you might want to deselect this setting.

Schedule
Set a daily schedule for putting your Mac to sleep or turning it off or on.

Shutdown options
Set your Mac to shut down based on conditions that apply when your Mac is drawing power from an uninterruptible power supply (UPS).

Slightly dim the display while on battery power
Allow your Mac to save energy by slightly reducing the brightness of the display while on battery power.

Start up automatically after a power failure
Allow your Mac to automatically start up when AC power is restored after a power interruption.

Turn display off after
Similar to ”Display sleep,” above.

Wake for network access
Allow your Mac to automatically wake when another device accesses its shared resources, such as shared printers or Music playlists. Some of these tasks might prevent the computer from sleeping when idle.


You can also save energy by adjusting your display’s brightness and the brightness of your backlit keyboard.

Learn more

After several hours of sleep, your Mac can save more energy by saving its state to the startup disk, then turning off power to some components, such as RAM. This extends the length of time that Mac notebook computers can stay asleep while on battery power.

It also helps prevent you from losing work if your Mac loses power while asleep, such as after the battery runs low. In that case, plug your Mac into AC power, then press the power button. You might see a progress bar onscreen as the previously stored contents of memory are copied from the startup disk:

Learn what to do if your Mac doesn't sleep or wake when expected.

Best FTP client for Mac
Get ForkLift, a smart and efficient Finder alternative.

A network drive, also known as a NAS (network attached storage) drive, is a storage device that connects to a home or office network instead of your computer. Some of the advantages of this are obvious: for example, you can get access files from a smartphone, tablet, or computer without having to plug the drive in.

Other, perhaps less obvious, positives of NAS include things like automated backups and the ability to mirror data on two drives. In other words, NAS offers a flexible and protected way to manage Mac storage that’s far beyond that of standard external hard drives. Read along to learn how to map a network drive and avoid some common NAS mistakes.

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What is a network drive used for?

Whether it’s populated or diskless, has one bay or more than five, a network drive is typically used as an alternative to cloud storage. It may be easy to drag and drop files to something like Google Drive or Dropbox, but just a bit of drive mapping can make using a network drive a fantastic cloud alternative.

Some of network drive’s key advantages include:

  • Better control over your files
  • More security features than cloud services
  • Flexibility without compromising on privacy
  • Being used by multiple users across multiple devices

Map network drive on macOS (one-time)

Nowadays, most NAS devices are seriously easy to map. Let’s say that you’ve been working on a document in your home office but have just remembered a key fact that you want to include. Time to make a quick edit from your wife’s laptop before you forget about it!

Network drive access can be obtained in three simple steps, provided you don’t mind having to repeat those steps if the connection drops, you restart your Mac, or the device is disconnected:

  1. In Finder, either hit Command+K to bring up “Connect to Server” or click Go > Connect to Server
  2. Enter the path of the network drive you’re trying to map (e.g. smb://192.168.1.300/shared/Files) and click Connect
  3. Enter your login details and password then click OK to mount the network drive

You can now access the relevant drive either via your desktop or the sidebar in Finder windows.

Map network drive on macOS (remount after reboot)

Maybe you have a server in your office with a connected network drive and want all your employees to be able to connect to it so they can collaborate on shared documents. If you want to keep a Mac connected to a network drive, even after restarting, the easiest way to do this is to follow the three steps above then add these:

  1. Hit the Apple menu, then System Preferences > Users & Groups
  2. From here, select Login Items and click + to add a new item
  3. Find your network drive and click Add, then close the window

Now, your network drive will be mapped and automatically remounted when you reboot your Mac. Network drives won’t, however, connect automatically if you’re using a different WiFi network.

Make a network drive accessible from Mac desktop

Depending on your settings, mounted drives may not always appear on your desktop. That’s not necessarily a problem if you don’t mind only being able to see connected servers in Finder window sidebars and open/save dialogues.

If, however, you want your NAS device to always be just one double-click away (in the same way that most people have Macintosh HD as a visible item on their desktop) just follow these steps:

  1. Open Finder > Preferences or click Command + to open Finder Preferences
  2. Click the General tab, then tick the box next to Connected servers
  3. Close Finder Preferences

Remount a mapped network drive with one click

Managing, or working across, multiple departments that each have their own network drive? In that case, it can be handy to create aliases of mapped network drive(s):

  1. Right click on any mapped NAS device on your desktop.
  2. Select Make Alias

This might not sound like anything all that significant but, as the subheading suggests, you can use this alias to reconnect to a network drive with one click. That can be very helpful if you need to keep jumping between different shared drives.

How to manage files with network-attached storage

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In most cases, macOS’s default tools are sufficient for viewing, editing, and deleting files. That might change, however, if you’re using a NAS device. For example, it’s very easy to end up with a ton of duplicate files on your network drive where it’s likely you’ll be less concerned about making the most of your storage as you might be with a built in hard drive.

Gemini is a great tool for digging out any duplicate content on your drives, so you can ditch everything you no longer need while hanging onto backup documents, photos, etc.

  1. Open up the app and hit the giant + or drag your folder of choice into the window
  2. Choose from recommended locations or select a custom folder
  3. Push the green Scan for Duplicates button to get started
  4. Delete duplicate files manually or use Smart Cleanup to automate the process

For a more granular approach to file management, you might want to consider something like DCommander or Forklift. These apps both offer dual-pane file management, as well as features like batch renaming, copying, and deletion, in a more seamless way than your default Finder.

Although Forklift was designed with FTP management in mind, it’s become a favorite of network drive users because of how closely it resembles macOS. Billed as a Finder replacement app in parts of its marketing material, you won’t find an app much more native unless it comes out of Cupertino.

Plus, actually getting started with the app is incredibly simple:

  1. Open up the Forklift app
  2. Use the left-hand panel to find the file(s) you want to move across
  3. Select the right-hand panel then, using the sidebar, click on your network drive
  4. Start moving, renaming and archiving files

If Forklift isn’t for you then you might prefer to take a look at DCommander, an approved Mac alternative of Total Commander for Windows. In addition to two side-by-side file panels that look very similar to those of Forklift, DCommander puts a wider range of commands and features (including quick file viewing, selective file unpacking, navigation history, and a great looking Dark Mode) at your fingertips without the need to leave the dual-panel display.

External

Both apps let you do things like mark certain drives as favorites, create and browse archives, and get previews of items. In short, they’re much like macOS’s Finder … only better. It’s difficult to overstate how much easier it becomes to manage Mac storage with dual-pane browsing until you try to organize your network drive without it!

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Mac Hard Drive Control Application

Effectively manage Mac storage day-to-day

Thanks to macOS, network drive mapping is a pretty simple process even if you’re not particularly tech-savvy. You might be out of luck if you’re hoping to access a NAS device from another network using standard macOS tools but, at present, that’s pretty much the only thing keeping network drives from competing with the cloud at the mainstream level.

If remote access isn’t such a concern for you and you’re using NAS as an alternative to cloud, then it’s definitely worth taking a look at programs like Forklift or DCommander to make file management easier once you’re done drive mapping, as well as Gemini to ensure that your NAS device isn’t filling up with duplicate files you don’t need.

Mac Hard Drive Control Apps

Best of all, the software mentioned above is available for a free trial through Setapp, a collection of over 150 high-quality macOS applications from the best developers around. Manage your Mac effectively today!