The reason I'm concerned is because of this statement I found on Iomega's site. This is for the Iomega® 160GB Network Hard Drive High-Speed Ethernet.
This makes me think that permissions have to be assigned by the device, not by OS X.

This question is not about permissions. It is about file locking conventions, which are completely seperate from permissions. You could be root and still be locked out of a file that is opened for exclusive write. OS X will assign the permissions. File locks are handled by the application and the OS of the host where the file is stored.

Thank you, that was my mistake saying "permissions." Now I'll know better what to ask the folks at LaCie and other vendors. You can see why I am concerned though. It looks like Iomega's drive will not cut it for what I want to do.

Very likely. File locking is fraught with complexity and pitfalls. They may have made the decision that since this is a consumer-grade device, they should take "safe" over "flexible."

I'd recommend you look at one of the low-end Snap servers prevalent on eBay. I'm pretty certain all those support proper (application-driven) file locking.

Not sure I can agree with this statement having worked with embedded Windows. The whole concept of embedded windows is you can take the OS apart piece by piece and only include the services and items you want.

I HIGHLY doubt a drive manufacturer would include those services in their embedded windows build that typical viruses use to travel on. Lets be real here that the majority of all viruses come in one of three ways:

1) email
2) web page
3) direct file copy and execution of said infected file

I don't think your etherdisk is going to be firing up outlook express or any other mail transport and I certainly don't think it will be surfing the web in your absence.

That leaves #3 which is still a possibility regardless of mac or windows. If you take a file from an unknown location, you don't virus check it and then you execute it yes you run the risk of infecting something.

But again what transport does the virus have on the embedded windows file server? The chances are EXTREMELY small that something could propagate that way. In fact I would venture to say it would have to be written specifically to attack that etherdrive and exploit some weakness there.

Also most Etherdrives should be installed on the private LAN side of the firewall. That will also protect them should their developers have been stupid enough to include something like MSN messenger in their build. Then the only people you have to worry about are the folks within your trusted group.

Mark

Is it possible?
 

Is it possible to use a Seagate Free Agent Pro USB/eSATA external hard drive to back up an old iMac and a new duo core on the same LAN through a router? My MIS guy says this is not possible but I can't believe that. If yes, how?