Accessing an external HDD from a PC through a Mac

Sorry it's taken me so long to reply to this, but I've been slacking.

To be more specific, I can only access his user account folder which is located on his internal HD. It's the only ''share'' I can get Windows to recognize. (//iBookName/useraccount) I've looked in every folder in his user folder, and I can't see anything resembling a drive. I can't access //iBookName.local, and to the best of my knowledge, I can't just make his drive a share. I've tried making an alias for the drive and putting that in his user folder, but XP doesn't know what to do with it.

Just going back through things quickly here, I can't see anything of his in My Network Places (no workgroup, no computername), except for the place I added manually earlier, which only gives me access to his user folder. He has Windows Sharing turned on, but it really seems like there's more to it than that. Is there a setting he could be missing on his iBook? Everything else is fine networking-wise (he can see my stuff no problem...sheesh...)

If there is a simple solution that I'm missing, or even something more complicated, I'm all ears. I'm pretty handy with directions.... What exactly am I looking for here? How do I turn Sharing on on the external?

ps. The formatted for XP and Mac just means I was able to see his drive on my XP laptop when it was connected directly to my XP laptop. That's how I was able to put stuff on his external in the first place.

I think so far as reaching his iBook HD it's just a case of making sure the permissions are set correctly on the iBoo - (select the drive or folder you want to share, then hit Cmd-I and look at the detailed permissions at the bottom of the window and tweak accordingly(you may have to authenticate to do this)

This works fine for me on the internal drive, but can't get it to work for my HTFS formatted external drive.

This from the MacWorld website: It may be what you are both looking for

If you're comfortable editing config files, then you can add the external firewire drive as a new share in your /etc/smb.conf file.

If you can first make sure that both computers are in the same workgroup, things will go easier. I'd say to first check on the XP machine ( R click on My Computer>>Properties>>Computer Name ), and see which workgroup it is set to. Most of the time the default is MSHOME. Then, on the Mac, go to Applications>>Utilities and start Directory Access. If the padlock is closed, click it and enter your user name and password. Double-click on SMB/CIFS, and enter the workgroup name from the PC. I tend to always enter the workgroup name in all caps (SMB is only supposed to see it as caps, but I've seen macs get confused if I enter the name in lowercase).Click OK, and then click the padlock.

Next, it's time to back-up the current smb.conf file. In a Terminal window, enter...

code:
sudo cp /etc/smb.conf /etc/smb.conf.orig

Enter your password, and hit return.

The smb.conf file has a basic format of

[sharename]
option = value
option = value

So, assuming that the name of the firewire drive that you want to share is "FirewireDrive", "joe" is the short name of the user account that can log onto the Mac, and "Mac-External" is the name you want to give the share, you'll add the following to the end of your /etc/smb.conf file....

[Mac-external]
path = /Volumes/FirewireDrive
valid users = joe
writable = yes

Adjust these to your situation. After editing and saving the smb.conf file, go to the sharing pane of System Preferences and restart Windows Filesharing.

Now it's time to go to the PC. If the networking dieties are smiling on you, the Mac will show right up when you go to My Network Places and click on "View workgroup computers". Double-click on the icon for the mac, and then double-click on the share you just set up. Enter the user name and password from the Mac, and you should be set.


Let us know how you get on

P

The Mac and XP machines are already in the same (MS-HOME) workgroup, which shows up in the network panels on both systems(view workgroup computers in XP, Network-> MS-HOME on OSX).

I just checked and I can see the optical drive on another PC, also in the MS-HOME workgroup

I'll try the SMB tweak and let you know.

I'm going to run a full backup first though - and this will take a couple of hours for Superduper to finish - and as it's 1 am here in the UK I'm off to bed!!

Will let you know how it goes tomorrow

Thanks

Thanks

Worked a treat

Many apologies for the long delay in replying