I meant to send this to the list but sent it to mark by mistake, sorry!
Been lurking for a while so I guess this is hello!
Is there a better way for me to be connecting to the Linux-based server so that I can access the same files that the Windows users are using through a mounted share?
Yes, the way we do it at work is like this
[sharename] force group sambafiles force user sambafiles path = /where/it/is create mask = 0660 directory mask = 0770 writable = yes write list = @users
You need to create a user and group called sambafiles that must not be used for anything else, you can control read and write to this share by using groups, all the files will be owned sambafiles:sambafiles which means all users in the allowed groups can read and write.
maz