Your iDisk space Opening your iDisk The iDisk Folders

Copying files to your iDisk Synchronizing your iDisk

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USING YOUR IDISK

 Apple's online 'MobileMe' service supplants its previous '.Mac' service, and provides online email, contacts, calendar and picture gallery, and server space called 'iDisk' which can be accessed via a web browser or, on a Mac, mounted on the Desktop as a network disk. This article explains the basics of using your iDisk.

To start using your iDisk you need to enter your account details:
In Mac OSX Leopard, System Preferences >MobileMe. (Enter your username without the '@me.com'.)
In Mac OSX Tiger, System Preferences>.Mac (the name hasn't been updated at the time of writing, but it still works).
In Mac OSX Panther some facilities work, though it isn't supported: System Preferences>.Mac doesn't recognize more than 2GB in the iDisk, and there is no syncing, but the iDisk mounts normally as below.
I have no experience of Windows but I understand there is a Control Panel to fulfill some of these functions.

To mount your iDisk on the desktop: in OSX, command-shift-i or Finder menu 'Go'>'iDisk'>'My iDisk'. This page explains how you may be able to do it in Windows. In OSX, the iDisk will mount as a 'network disk' on your Desktop, just in the way that an external hard disk does, (except that, as it connect over the internet, it is of course much slower). In OSX 'Leopard' it mounts with the new icon shown on the right: in Tiger and Panther it mounts with the old one.

To mount your iDisk automatically on startup in OSX: Copy the following into the AppleScript Editor:


(note that from 'mount volume' to 'password"' is all one line, no line break; and obviously replace 'username' and 'password' as appropriate.) Save it as an Application and set it in System Preferences>Accounts as a login item.

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YOUR iDISK SPACE

The basic subscription gives you 20GB of space: you can pay extra to increase it to 40 or 60GB. When you first open your iDisk its capacity will show as half the full capacity: this is because the space has been allocated equally between email and the iDisk. Go to http://www.me.com and sign in: click on the button with a head-and-shoulders icon to open your account settings (you will need to give the password again). In the left-hand column click on 'Storage Settings' and you can reduce the mail setting, thus increasing the iDisk setting. With the basic subscription you are allowed 200GB of downloads (you and everyone else) in the form of 100GB per half month. Your site would have to be extremely popular to exceed these limits.

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OPENING YOUR iDISK

When you double-click on the iDisk icon on your Desktop it will open to show folders, just like clicking on your main hard disk icon (left). These folders are set by Apple: you cannot delete them. Each one has a different purpose, and they work in slightly different ways, which will be discussed below.

You can also access your iDisk through the MobileMe web site at http://www.me.com: once signed in (with your username without the '@me.com') you can click on the button with the purple folder at top left to access your iDisk (right). Here you can up- and download files: this site will not work with Safari 1, IE 6 or most of the minor browsers: later versions of Safari will work, FireFox 2 will work (including on Panther) and FireFox 3 should work but may have minor issues.

A further way of accessing your iDisk is at http://idisk.mac.com/username; this works with most browsers but is slightly more limited than the MobileMe site. In particular you can only up- or download single files, not folders.

At the time of writing there is a bug in the uploading process if you do it through http://www.me.com: pages uploaded this way appear correctly in Safari but FireFox treats them as if they were an application and offers to download them. The interface at http://idisk.mac.com/username does not exhibit this bug, neither does uploading in Transmit or in the Finder to the mounted iDisk.

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THE iDISK FOLDERS

These folders behave in different ways, and for best results should be used correctly.

• The Documents Folder is for storing private documents and media. You can add subfolders and use it just like a hard disk. Items placed here are available only by use of your main MobileMe password (which obviously you don't give out). You can access it through the three methods detailed above, but it never appears generally on the net.

• The Sites Folder is for web pages and associated media that you have created yourself in third party applications, or in Apple's online HomePage application which is accessible at http://homepage.mac.com. Pages you place here appear on the net at http://homepage.mac.com/username/filename; a file called 'index.html' does not have to be named in the URL and should be used as your start page. You can create subfolders in the usual way. Note that if you create an index.html page yourself and then create any page in HomePage your original index.html file will be renamed index.old.html and replaced with a HomePage one. All pages and media in this folder are fully available unless you use HomePage's facility to create a password-protected site.

• The Web folder is intended for use by the iWeb site creation program which is part of iLife (included with most Macs or purchasable separately). iWeb creates a Sites folder within the Web folder and publishes to that: pages created there appear at http://web.me.com/username. You can place pages in this folder yourself, but note that if you then use iWeb it will overwrite any index.html file you have there. More information on the creation of web sites on your iDisk is in this tech note.

• The Movies, Music, and Pictures folders are available for you to store media of these types: you can of course put anything in any of these folders but for neatness it's obviously best to put images in the Pictures folder and so on. If you are creating your own picture galleries you could keep the images in this folder and reference them, but frankly it's easier to keep everything in the Sites folder (the MobileMe online Gallery stores its images in the _gallery folder in the WEb/Sites folder and you should not tamper with that). The contents of these three folders are not private: the contents of the Pictures folder are freely available at http://homepage.mac.com/username/.Pictures/filename (note the period before Pictures and the capital 'P'), and similar for the others.

• The Public Folder is for making files of any sort available generally for downloading: it can be password protected. Please see this tech note for full details.
  
  
  Files in the above folders can now be made available for sharing: please see this note.

• The Software Folder contains free software provided by Apple. Originally there were several programs and a collection of sample GarageBand loops, but now there is only the Backup application. This folder is not actually part of your iDisk space and its contents do not count towards your allocation.

• The Library Folder is for MobileMe's use in storing bookmarks and preferences, and should be left alone.

• The Backup Folder is for storing backups made by the Backup application and should also be left alone. Its contents do count towards your space allocation and can grow fairly large if you don't keep an eye on it.

• The Groups Folder in theory contains the various folders for any Group you belong to: however this .Mac facility seems to to either have been withdrawn or is not working at all well, so it's worth ignoring.

• The Desktop and Desktop Folder folders are part of the mechanism of the iDisk and should be ignored.

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COPYING FILES TO YOUR iDISK

In Mac OSX just dragging and dropping like any other disk works, but can be quite slow: also the Finder tends to claim that the file has uploaded while it's still in progress.You might think it worth investing $29.95 in Transmit, which will access, upload to and download from your iDisk faster and more reliably than the Finder.

Windows (or Mac) users can use either the online application or a downloadable application at http://www.anyclient.com to connect to the iDisk: I have not tested this so cannot personally recommend it but others have had success with it.

In both OSX and Windows you can use most browsers to access your iDisk at http://idisk.mac.com/username and upload and download files (though only one at a time), or log in at http://www.me.com with supported browsers and click on the iDisk button in the toolbar.

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SYNCHRONIZING YOUR iDISK (THE 'LOCAL COPY')

This is something I advise against doing, but I have written a separate tech note about how to do it, and the pros and cons. Note the warning on that page that if you have synchronized your iDisk and decide to cancel your account you should stop synchronization before doing so.