Mapping User Home Folder to a Drive in Windows 10

[Frazer]

I have a QNAP NAS with four approved family users, each with their own home folder and NAS login. When each user logs into their own desktop on Windows 10 I want each user to have access to their own folder on the NAS (but only their own).

I can't work out how to map any of these use home folders at all. If I open the Windows 10 network shares for the NAS I can see all the network root folders but the individual user home folders are all in the 'homes' share and only accessible with an admin password which gives all users access to all the home folders. This rather defeats one of the key purposes of everyone having their own separate file storage and user login.

How do I get around this?

[Frazer]

Still getting nowhere with this. I can easily create a shared folder and map that for user access but I can't work out how to map the user folders in 'homes'. These only seem to be accessible by direct login which is much less practical for family use.

Help please - am I just being stupid?

[Mousetick]

I can't work out how to map any of these use home folders at all. If I open the Windows 10 network shares for the NAS I can see all the network root folders but the individual user home folders are all in the 'homes' share and only accessible with an admin password which gives all users access to all the home folders.

That's because you have authenticated as user 'admin' to the NAS file server from Windows. The admin user can see all home folders within 'homes'. That peculiarity is unique to the admin user. A reminder that it is a special, all-powerful user which should not be used for regular day-to-day activities, but only as necessary for system administration activities.

The name of a user's home shared folder is 'home'. So if you have a user named 'John' for example, their home shared folder is \\NAS\home. To map John's home shared folder, you need to authenticate as username 'John' to the NAS from Windows and then specify the path \\NAS\home. If the user is authenticated as Jane, the path is the same \\NAS\home, but is pointing to a different location on the NAS file server.

On the NAS, John's home folder is located at /homes/John while Jane's home folder is located at /homes/Jane. On the Windows network, they all appear with the same 'home' name however.

To make things a lot easier, set up your NAS users such as they have the exact same username and password as their respective Windows user accounts. In doing so, when John or Jane log in to their respective Windows account, they can just browse the Network view and they will see 'home' listed as an available shared folder from the NAS file server. This happens automatically because Windows by default uses the same credentials to authenticate with the network file server as the currently logged in user.

Still getting nowhere with this. I can easily create a shared folder and map that for user access but I can't work out how to map the user folders in 'homes'. These only seem to be accessible by direct login which is much less practical for family use.

Home folders are private and exclusive to their respective user. By definition they are only accessible by "direct login". If you want to access these home folders using a single common 'family' login (i.e. one username used by all persons), then don't use home folders - they are the opposite of what you want! Just create a regular shared folder, and create sub-folders inside it, one for each family member...