Sharing External USB Hard Drive

  • Thread starter Thread starter Bob
  • Start date Start date
B

Bob

I am trying to enable sharing on an external hard drive.
I have sharing and permissions enabled. When I try to access
the drive from another computer, I get the following error
message:
(name of drive) is not accessible. You might not have permission to use
this network resource. Contact the administrator of this server to find
out if you have access permission.

The drive is physically connected to a Vista machine and I want to be
able to access it from an XP machine.

Any ideas on how to "fix" this?
 
Bob said:
I am trying to enable sharing on an external hard drive.
I have sharing and permissions enabled. When I try to access
the drive from another computer, I get the following error
message:
(name of drive) is not accessible. You might not have permission to use
this network resource. Contact the administrator of this server to find
out if you have access permission.

The drive is physically connected to a Vista machine and I want to be
able to access it from an XP machine.
Click to expand...

I'm assuming that you have correctly set up file/printer sharing on all
computers and can otherwise transfer files between the machines. If my
assumption is incorrect, please post back with more details about what
operating systems the computers are running, etc.

Otherwise, you are probably trying to share the entire drive. Either create
a folder on the drive and then share that (better solution) or do the
following (provided by Michael Bell - MS):

When you share out the root of a drive in Vista, the UI only allows this
through the advanced sharing option. When the advanced sharing option is
used it only sets the share permissions. The actual permissions on a file
share are a combination of Folder and Share permissions. In Vista the
everyone group doesn not have permissions so when you connect without a
password the system you can see the folders but not access them or possibly
connect to the share but fail to open it.

1. Open Computer
2. Right click on the shared drive and select properties from the context
menu
3. Select the Security Tab in the displayed properties sheet.

If you are connecting to the computer with no password then you are
connecting with the guest account. In order to access the files on the
drive, the everyone group needs to have access set here.

Malke
 
The drive in question is the second external HD I have attached to the
Vista machine.

I tried your suggestion to create a folder on the drive and share
that folder but no joy.

I have no problem sharing the other HD.

I am also sharing a flash drive and a DVD drive attached to the Vista
machine without a problem.

The sharing and permissions settings are the same for all of them.

I can also share the root drive of the Vista machine without a problem.

My printer is attached to the XP desktop machine and I can access it
from the Vista machine.

I have an XP laptop on my network as well, and everything I said also
applies to the laptop.
 
Bob said:
The drive in question is the second external HD I have attached to the
Vista machine.

I tried your suggestion to create a folder on the drive and share
that folder but no joy.

I have no problem sharing the other HD.

I am also sharing a flash drive and a DVD drive attached to the Vista
machine without a problem.

The sharing and permissions settings are the same for all of them.

I can also share the root drive of the Vista machine without a problem.

My printer is attached to the XP desktop machine and I can access it
from the Vista machine.

I have an XP laptop on my network as well, and everything I said also
applies to the laptop.
Click to expand...

Then I'm sorry but something must be different about the permissions on the
external drive (even though you think they are the same) but without being
able to examine the computer and the external drive, I don't know. I'm
sorry that I was unable to help you.

Malke
 
Thanks, I appreciate your efforts.


Malke said:
Then I'm sorry but something must be different about the permissions on
the
external drive (even though you think they are the same) but without being
able to examine the computer and the external drive, I don't know. I'm
sorry that I was unable to help you.

Malke
Click to expand...
 
I have had the case where I had to "take ownership" of an external HD before
I could access it. You might want to try that.

-Frank
Click to expand...

Along similar lines (assuming there's no data on the drive that you
want to keep), Bob could simply repartition and reformat it, though
"Take Ownership" would be my first choice.
 
Sounds like the drive might not have been formatted using NTFS. The below
quote comes from MS's web site.

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc783530(WS.10).aspx

Shared folders are stored on NTFS file system volumes. You can set
permissions at the file level only if the files are stored on an NTFS
volume. On a FAT or FAT32 volume, you can set permissions for shared folders
but not for files and folders within a shared folder. Moreover, share
permissions on a FAT or FAT32 volume restrict network access only, not
access by users working directly on the computer.
 
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