Drive Mounty – Keep your network drives connected!
Drive Mounty is an essential tool for anyone using network drives (i.e. NAS):
- Add a network drive for monitoring.
- Drive Mounty will automatically try to reconnect it when it disappears (such as when installing an update).
- Once the network drive is available, Drive Mounty will remount it!
Features:
- Simple to use interface.
- Integrated with Notification Centre to keep track of events and allow you to monitor what has happened.
- Ability to set connection attempt limits or have it keep trying forever!
- Once the network drive is configured (with username and password stored to the keychain), no user input is required.
- Autonomous mode – Drive Mounty can be configured to run on startup and minimised so it doesn’t get in your way whilst it’s keeping an eye on your network drives.
- Unlimited number of network drives can be monitored (requires in-app purchase).
Please note: This version (without the one-time in-app purchase) will only allow you to monitor one network drive and once a drive has been reconnected it will stop monitoring. This version is free to allow you to evaluate the app features.
Drive Mounty is now available from the Mac App Store. Click the App Store image above to download it.
Please log any issues you find on this blog and keep an eye out for any updates that are coming!
Garry Whitten's Blog 
I just bought this app, but I get the information: disconnected- reconnecting, but no drive showing up. I also miss a help file with how to setup and the meaning of for ‘home network mode’. I am using a mac with Catalina. Can you help? My NAS and shares are already visible in Finder.
Hi Jos, thx for purchasing the app! When you opened it for the first time, you should have been able to browse and select a mount that you wish to monitor. Did you do this? You can disable monitoring and remove any monitored mounts to remove this loop. With regards to home network mode, this enables you to set the app to only monitor the mounts you’ve specified when you’re on your home network (via up address). This will stop the app from searching when you’re away from your home network. Hope this helps. Thx.
Hi Garry, I tried everything, even afp and later smb protocols seperately, but the same errors occur. Sometimes I get the first drive/share with the name ‘Data’ working properly but the second one with the name ‘Downloads’ is giving the monitored notification: ‘Volumes/downloads disconnected – attempting to reconnect’. But I did disable the Monitoring before. I also removed the drivers in the drive mounty window, quit the application and started again. But the same results, getting frustrated…
Hmm so is the drive unmounted or is it actually there but the app thinks it’s dropped? I’ll need to test this out on Catalina as I’ve not had the chance to do so yet. When you add the drives are they reported as connected or something else?
Hi,
Did everything again, stopped your app and then rebooted.
Put the two drives in the app window, logged out and in.
Nothing happens, only the notification as mentioned before.
Do you known that apple is not supporting 32 bit apps anymore in Catalina?
Regards, Jos.
Hi Jos, ok I will check this out. The app is 64bit so not an issue (32bit apps won’t run on Catalina). When you say “put the 2 drives in the app window” do you mean that you added them (via the button) or dragged them into the window?
Via the button, Garry.
Hi Jos, I’ve just tested the app on Catalina with an afp mount. Added the device and it showed as connected. I manually ejected the device and got the disconnect notification. It attempted the reconnect and the device was remounted and the connected notification was displayed. My laptop was on WiFi and device was wired to the network. Home network mode was disabled.
Hi Garry,
I started all over again, this after an minor update for Catalina. But no results again, nothing happens (drives don’t appear). If I click on the drive mounty icon in the lower bar, the drive mounty screen opens and it shows for both drives: ‘disconnected – reconnecting’
So, no solution yet.
Gr. Jos
Garry, perhaps should I remove Drive mounty, and install again?
I can remove it with Macbooster, or your manual, you let me know?
And of course, can you sent me a new one?
Hi Garry, It doesn’t seems to work in my situation and I don’t hear from you anymore. Is it possible to get my money back. Thanks for all your efforts so far to help me! I guess it’s just my Mac.
Hi Jos, sorry I did respond but I agree, there’s obviously something that’s not working but I can’t replicate it to fix it. No problem at all with a refund, you’ll need to request through the App Store though as all payment is taken there. Thx for persisting with trying to find a resolution.
Good morning, having trouble with the app.
Have made groups but I when I type in the message it won’t send.
Also won’t allow me to review the message.
Thanks.
Hi Chris, sorry to hear that. Is this once you’re taken to the iOS message window? One thing to check is that if you’re mixing iOS and Android recipients then you won’t be able to use emails for any of the recipients- the issue sounds like you’ve got invalid contact information for one or more of them. Let me know how you get on. 👍🏼
Hi Garry, great app! I have however run into a small error that i’m not sure if it’s something i’ve done.
I have a NAS server (Open Media Vault) and connected to several network shares using SMB. they open first through the login items, and i’ve added the mounts to Drive Mounty. however after i reboot or shutdown the drive mounty entries always say “Disconnected – reconnecting” but doesn’t re-mount the volumes.
I can go direct to the server and open the share and osx re-mounts the volume but drive mounty doesn’t pick it up.
If i delete / re-add the entries it says connected. however, if i eject the drive Drive Mounty wont reconnect.
I’m not sure if this is something wrong with my nas settings or the way im connecting
I have tried deleting keychain entries and re-adding them.
Many thanks
Pete.
Hi Pete, thanks for the kind words and description of the issue. Sorry to hear your having a problem. Could I ask you to try a couple of things pls? 1) remove the shares from the app and quit it (ensure the drives are mounted to you Mac). 2) add one of the shares back into the app for monitoring. 3) eject the share you added in step 2 from finder.
Does the app recognise the drive being unmounted?
Does it reconnect the drive?
From what I’ve read above, the issue only happens when the Mac is booted up?
It could be a sequence issue, app starts and detects that the drives aren’t connected and initiates the reconnect but the drives reconnect before app can catch the reconnection notifications (which is how the app knows the drives have reconnected).
Do you have a way to test this scenario?
Hi, thanks for getting back so quick. I tried those steps, DM recognises the drive has become un-mounted but just says “Disconnected -reconnecting” and doesn’t re-mount the drive.
Interestingly, I tried installing DM on my Macbook (also Mojave 10.14.6) which has not had DM installed before, and, everything worked as it should. I added the shared drive in osx, then in Drive Mounty. disconnected and it reconnected. However, I then did a ‘restore purchase’ to the pro version, and since that it has stopped on my macbook too.
I restarted, followed the procedures as you suggested above, and still the same result.
I then clicked “enable home network mode” (though the IP address in the preferences wasn’t in the same range) the DM entry says “monitoring disabled -away from home” DM then successfully reconnected the drive.
I’ve tried several steps further to this. If I eject the shares DM doesn’t reconnect.
if I disable/enable monitoring, they reconnect.
if I eject again they do not reconnect, until I re- disable/enable monitoring.
I removed the osx shares from ‘Login items’ and put DM into login items, and restarted. Shares not connected at logon. if I disable/enable monitoring again they connect.
A similar thing happens if I enable home network mode.
If I start with shares mounted, open DM and check – DM>Prefrences>IP (Correct)
Then, eject the shares. Check DM>Prefrences>IP (no IP selected).
click in the blank IP box and an option for a different addr is listed.
If I click that and ‘Close’, the shares reconnect.
I then click on prefs. and the IP box is blank, but clicking on it lists the correct IP.
again, ejecting > prefs, IP field is blank / changed.
—-
Apologies it’s a bit convoluted but didn’t know if these steps might narrow it down anymore. But in summary, after going to pro mode. I’m either having to disable/enable monitoring or, reselecting the IP address (with home networking mode on OR off)
thanks.
Hi Pete, thx for the details- the more the better. Did you restart the app after restoring purchase? I only ask because the lite version will stop monitoring after the first disconnect occurs. Maybe the upgrade doesn’t reinstate it correctly? It’s very strange, I don’t have a Mojave OS to test on here only Catalina and Big Sur. you don’t happen to be using a VPN on either machine? They can block network shares and will obviously impact the IP Address. Have you tried correctly configuring home network mode and specifying the IP Address?
Hi Gary,
Been searching for a solution for disconnecting drives forever and came across your app 🙂 It was working ok, but the drives disconnected and it wouldn’t reconnect and ever since then has been stuck – I can see the screen, but am permanently confronted with the spinning wheel of death, so I cannot even remove the drives to try and set them up again.
Running Catalina 10.15.7. I even changed the file protocol to fix it to SMB instead of having both AFP and SMB running together, but I cannot get the app to respond no matter what I do. I tried restarting the app and the computer, manually connecting the drives before starting the app and a few other combos I don’t remember anymore 😉
Any ideas?
Thanks,
Graeme
Hi Graeme, I’ve experienced the same issue as you myself. It’s based around the drive connecting as a different share volume. To fix this I did the following:
Force quit the app
Restart and use the menu to disable monitoring (you may have to wait for the app to respond)
Once done, quit the app.
Restart the app, remove the shares and re-add them.
Reenable monitoring.
Perfect, thanks Garry – it took some waiting, but that seems to have done the trick!