Today, while researching some information for a client who needed a way to link his Mobile Me iDisk to Windows, I came upon this little gem which I also later found on the Apple Support site.   Before coming to this page, I had found Apple’s iDisk utility for Windows XP to not work with Windows 7.  The first part will allow you to have a drive letter assigned to your iDisk (example i: in Computer).  The second part, comes from a forum post on Apple Discussions which will allow you to keep information synchronized with the iDisk that is now linked to your computer.  Read past to jump to find out more!

First, let’s open “Computer”.

 
Then, click the “Map network drive”

 
After that, select the drive letter you want your iDisk to be linked to.  I chose A: for Apple iDisk as my i: letter was already in use by by card reader.  You will want to make sure both boxes are checked and enter your appropriate user name into "folder” section.  In this case, itjchan happens to be my username.  After this, click “Finish”.

 
You’ll be presented with a screen to enter your Mobile Me user name and password.  Simply enter your username without the @me.com and your password similar to what’s show in the photo below.  Remember to check the box so things will be automatic and seamless.  After that, click “OK” and you’re done!

You’ll notice now that on your Computer screen there is now a new mapping.  Double click to access your iDisk.

 
Now that we have access to the iDisk, it would be very useful if we could synchronize it with a local folder.  For this, we are going to use a freeware program (for moderate personal use) called Allway Sync.  After installing it, let’s look at how to set it up.  You’ll first get this screen.  First we’ll click browse and select a folder which we would like to sync.  It does not matter the order of selecting the folders.  For the purpose of this tutorial however, the first folder will be the the folder on the local computer and the second choice being the newly mapped iDisk drive.

 
In the resulting box that allows me to select which folder I want to have on my local computer (you can select any folder you want…just make sure it’s easy to find), I selected it to be shared across my network.  I created a folder called “iDisk” in “Public Documents”.  After selecting that folder, I click on “OK”.

 
We now have the left side selected and now we need to select the iDisk.  We’ll do that now.

 
We’ll now choose the A: iDisk network link which we created earlier in the first part of the tutorial.  After selecting the iDisk drive we’ll click “OK”.

From here, what we’d like to do is click the “Analyze”.  It will give us the next screen which would most likely include some warnings which we will see in the next photo.

As this is our first time synchronizing, Allway Sync will give us an error.  This error message must be “ignored” before the “Synchronize” button can be clicked.

 
After clicking “Synchronize”, Allway Sync will start synchronizing between your computer and iDisk.  This is a manual job until it is automated.  We’ll show you how to do this now.

 
In the above menu, choose “View”, then options.  You’ll be presented with this screen. You’ll notice that under “Default Profile” is a job that is called “New Job 1”.  Click there and then going to “Automatic Synchronization” will allow you to choose additional options in which we would like to select the following:

Check the box “When file changes are detected.  (I selected a delay of 1 minute so if I made any changes to a file, it would automatically synchronize after 1 min.  This will tie up a tiny bit of CPU power as it will be checking every minute.  It’s optional as to when the delay period is so you may match my settings or choose something else.) Feel free to explore and read through what other choices there are for file synchronization.  

And that’s all folks!  After that, now you have a iDisk synchronization system that works with Windows 7.  If you use Windows XP, feel free to use the Apple utility mentioned above which would not work for Windows 7.  In closing, let me share the closing lines of my Toastmaster’s meeting from yesterday:

May your stuffing be tasty,

May your turkey be plump,

May your potatoes ‘n gravy have nary a lump.

May your yams be delicious,

May your pies take the prize,

May your Thanksgiving dinner stay off of your thighs!

Have a most blessed and wonderful Thanksgiving!

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