From time to time, you have the need of accessing different shares/folders on a server (or NAS) using different credentials.

The official explanation is, that it is not possible to have two sessions to the same server, using different users/passwords, at the same time.This is indeed correct, not even Window 10 can do that. So what do you do? There is a workaround to this problem, and I will explain it here.

The workaround

The workaround is to fool Windows into thinking that you are accessing two different servers at the same time. This requires that we add an entry to the hosts file on your PC. The entry goes the server a different name than it normally have. Then it is possible to access the serer using the two names, each with its own credentials.

Entry in the hosts file

First you need to figure out a name to call the server/NAS in question, when you want to access it with different credentials. It can be as simple as ‘{server-name}2’ or ‘{server-name}{name-of-folder}’. E.g. ‘mynas2’, ‘mynassecretfolder’.

Open the hosts file, add an entry and them save the file.

When start Pathfinder and enter the new server/NAS name into the address field. Then click on the share you want to use. A login box should be displayed. Enter the credentials.

If all worked as expected, you now have two connections to the same server.