How to mount home mac HD drive from remote?

A MobileMe setup would make this easier (as in Apple does all the work).

If you just need to access a file or 2 from time to time (either get to work on, or put back a file for safe keeping), then I would look at using TeamViewer.com (free for personal use). Yes it is a screen sharing utility, but it also allows copying files between your 2 systems. It easily deals with finding your Mac across the Internet (one of the harder parts), it uses a secure connection, it knows how to get through home NAT routers, and it has an unattended mode so you do not need to have someone at the other end cooperating with you. And once you have the file you want, you can quit from TeamViewer.com until you need it again. You can also test it while at home.

<http://teamviewer.com>

With some more work, and experimentation, you might get exactly what you want by installing Hamachi (VPN) on both your systems.

<http://www.macupdate.com/app/mac/36286/logmein-hamachi> (again free for personal use)

Once configured properly, Hamachi should make your home and on-the-road systems appear as if they are on the same local network.

After that you are either into for pay options (although I could have missed a few free options too), or you will have lots of setup work both in the terminal as well as configuring your home router, and establishing connections may require terminal work each time you want to connect, but from your description, terminal work and lots of setup is not desirable.

I am thinking, is there a way to use the 'connect to server' feature? If so, what do I type there?

The problem here is 2 fold. First you have to find your home computer, as your ISP most likely uses DHCP dynamically assigned IP addresses, so one day you could a.b.c.d address, and the next you could be q.r.s.t address. This can be worked around using a dynamic DNS name from a service such as No-IP.com or DynDNS.org.

Second, you have to get through your home router. That involves configuring it for port forwarding of port 5900 for Screen Sharing and 548 for file sharing to your home Mac <http://portforward.com>

Once you get that all working, you would use Finder -> Go -> Connect to Server...

vnc://dyn.dns.name.or.ip.address.of.you.home.mac
afp://dyn.dns.name.or.ip.address.of.you.home.mac

VNC for screen sharing

AFP for file sharing.

NOTE: This connection is NOT secure. You can encrypt your screen sharing connection, after you make your first screen sharing connection by changing the Screen Sharing -> Preferences -> Encrpt all network data.

However, I do not think the is an option for encrypting your file system data via the afp://address method.

Oh yea, and since this now exposes well known ports directly to the internet, you should make sure you have a very secure password on your home system. Longer is better. <https://www.grc.com/haystack.htm>

I am unsure, but I think you need to have a router that supports issuing Wake-on-LAN to the client systems. HOWEVER, I could be wrong, as I have not played with Linksys systems.

I do know that the current line of Airport Extreme routes have a service that will make it appear as if the Mac is on-line and waiting to recieve a connection request, but in reality the Mac is asleep. When a connection request comes in, the Airport Extreme will send a Wake-on-LAN packet so that the Mac can field the connection.

I have not played with this either, as my home Mac mini (aka backup server) is always running. My Macs only sleep when they are laptops being transported somewhere. Otherwise they are awake.

I did a Google search for "Linksys wake on wan" and got the following". I found the following:

<http://www.dslreports.com/faq/6790>

<http://homecommunity.cisco.com/t5/Wireless-Routers/WOL-Wake-on-LAN-over-WAN-with -Linksys-WRT610N/td-p/224063>

<http://homecommunity.cisco.com/t5/Wireless-Routers/WRT54GS-Wake-On-WAN-the-quest ion-for-the-ages/td-p/202147>

NOTE: These are just a few hits, and since I DO NOT have a Linksys router, I cannot actually try them.