Do you want to connect to a network hard drive or NAS from your iPhone? Do it without installing anything!
Today, a large part of companies, public entities and educational centers, as well as some individuals, have a shared disk in network or NAS. In this way, it is much easier to share important files and documents, either privately or shared among all users.
This is something that, in general, is configured to be used locally on shared computers, whether they are PCs with Windows or Linux, or with Mac computers. However, in the hypothetical case that you want to access the network drive from your iPhone, iPad or iPod touch, to say that you will also have the possibility of doing it in a very simple way, which can be very useful on many occasions.
Network hard drive: everything you need to know to connect from your iPhone
As we mentioned, as it can be done on Mac and other devices, it is possible connect to network hard drives directly from the Files app of the iPhone, iPad or iPod touch, without having to download or install any other app. However, it is important that you know what you are doing at all times to avoid potential problems in the future.
What exactly is a NAS or network hard drive?
In general, when talking about a network disk, it is usually related to the concept of the NAS, which comes from the initials of Network Attached Storage, in English. Roughly, It is a disk that is shared between a network, usually locally, so that any device connected to it can access the content using certain credentials.
For this, although it is true that there are various protocols, some free and others private, as well as the applications of the manufacturers of these devices, the truth is that it is usually quite common to use the SMB protocol to connect to network disks. On many occasions, this protocol is associated with Microsoft services and the Windows operating system, but this does not imply that it cannot be accessed from other systems such as iOS or iPadOS.
In fact, by default Finder on Mac computers incorporates support for this protocol, so that anyone can connect to a network disk using SMB without any problem and without the need to install anything. And, with the arrival of the Files app for the iPhone and iPad, the same thing happened: although the compatibility is not as wide as in macOS, you can connect without problem from your device to a network disk or NAS.
So you can connect to any network drive from your iPhone, iPad or iPod touch without installing anything
As we mentioned, in this case you will have the possibility of connecting from iOS or iPadOS to any hard drive on the network or NAS without any problem, as long as you know the access credentials to use. Taking this into account, it is important that you know that, in the vast majority of cases, in order to connect you must be on the same network as the network drive, not being able to access from the Internet anywhere.
In this sense, the only thing that can happen to be able to access the storage from anywhere is either that use your NAS provider’s app to connect if it allows it, or that you use a VPN to access your network and, therefore, that you can access your disk from the Files app when connected to it.
With this in mind, if you are on the same network as the hard drive and you know the SMB access data, to connect to it from your iPhone, iPad or iPod touch without installing anything you just have to follow these steps:
- Open the Files application that is installed by default on iOS or iPadOS.
- Make sure you are on the app’s home screen, then click on the menu at the bottom the option “Explore”.
- Once inside, in the upper left, click on the options button and, in the menu that will be displayed, choose “Connect to server”.
- A new window will open, where you should enter hostname first network hard disk. It can be a common name within the network, an IP address or a domain, but it must be compatible with SMB.
- Afterwards, you should enter username and password with which you want to identify yourself and, if all goes well, you will be able to see the contents of the hard disk in a matter of seconds.
Once this is done, if you access the section of To explore within the files application of your iPhone, you will be able to see how the network disk appears as if it were a server, and if you click on it you will be able to use any directory the same as from the Finder on a Mac or from any other device without problems. In addition, every time you access it, the list of files and directories will be automatically updated by your iPhone or iPad, so you won’t have to worry about it.
In this way, as you may have seen, connecting to a network disk, NAS or SMB server from the iPhone is quite simple. When you stop needing it, you can easily unmount it within the Files application from the phone, and if you need it again, you will only have to follow the steps again to reconnect.
Related topics: Tutorials
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