Do I have to share external HD everytime I connect?

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CCOVICH

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I have a wireless home network set up-2 laptops and an external HD linked to one of the laptops.

When I try to access the external HD from the other laptop, I have to manually set permissions each time.

Is there anyway around this?
 
Windows? What version on each laptop?

Do you have to set it up everytime, or only if you've disconnect the external drive in the mean time?
 
XP on the laptop with the external HD
Vista Premium with t'other.

The HD is always plugged in and connected, but it is powered off when not in use.

I have to set permissions to share it everytime I turn it on.
 
What exactly do you mean by setting permissions? Do you have to re-share it each time? And set permissions at the share level? Or/also at the NTFS level (assuming the external HD is NTFS and not FAT[32])?
 
ClubMan said:
Do you have to re-share it each time?
Click to expand...

Yes.


ClubMan said:
Or/also at the NTFS level (assuming the external HD is NTFS and not FAT[32])?
Click to expand...

Not sure what this means, I'm pretty sure it's NTFS (bought 2 years ago).

Visually, there is a 'hand' under the internal HD icon everytime I turn on the laptop. There is no 'hand' under the external HD icon until I share it.
 
So the internal HD shares automatically, but the external HD doesn't?

XP Home or XP Pro? Vista Home Premium or something else? Networking in XP Home is deliberately crippled -- I've experience odd behaviour with shared drives due to this. Not sure about Vista Home. Though if the internal drives work fine, that's probably not related to your problem.
 
CCOVICH said:
I have a wireless home network set up-2 laptops and an external HD linked to one of the laptops.

When I try to access the external HD from the other laptop, I have to manually set permissions each time.

Is there anyway around this?
Click to expand...

You could change your network config - share your drives from this NAS server, rather than from the laptop:

[broken link removed]

This firmware is Linux-based, and there are plenty of sites where you can get non-Linksys firmware updates.

http://www.nslu2-linux.org/ for starters.

NTFS is supported, althought you might be better re-formatting your external drive as ext3:

http://www.nslu2-linux.org/wiki/FAQ/NTFS
 

Thanks, but it's not worth spending any money on it to be honest.
 
This might help:
[broken link removed]

Go to the section about locking drive letters and lock your external drive to a particular letter. Set sharing on it once you've done this. You should then be able to switch it off and on without it losing it's sharing. I tried this (switching the drive off and on) on my cheapo Lidl USB drive and it seems to work! I didn't try switching the computer off though, so hopefully that won't cause any problems!?
 

Thanks again. I have already gone through the mapping exercise and it doesn't work for some reason, but I'll give it another go.
 
CCOVICH said:
Thanks again. I have already gone through the mapping exercise and it doesn't work for some reason, but I'll give it another go.
Click to expand...
Did you ever unplug it from the USB socket? I would imagine that this would lose all the saved info, even if you plug it back into the same one. (Okay, I'm guessing here!).

Or could you assign it a high drive letter to make sure that nothing is getting in the way/over-writing the usage. (I'm using U: ).
 
Last edited by a moderator:
yoganmahew said:
Did you ever unplug it from the USB socket? I would imagine that this would lose all the saved info, even if you plug it back into the same one. (Okay, I'm guessing here!).
Click to expand...

That could be it alright.

yoganmahew said:
Or could you assign it a high drive letter to make sure that nothing is getting in the way/over-writing the usage. (I'm using U: ).
Click to expand...


I'm using X or Z.
 
You could try connecting using the default share, assuming the drive leter of the external drive is fixed; map the drive on the Vista machine as \\xp_laptop_name\z$ (where z is the drive letter).

I use this rather than manually sharing the drive. Note that this will share the entire drive
 
Try using Start->Run->type 'fsmgmt.msc' and use this tool to see if you can keep your drive shared.
 
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