Sharing external USB drive over network
 

I've poked around looking for some insight into this issue online and in this forum but have only come up with advice around Windows and PC sharing that involved SWAT and samba stuff... seems like a complicated solution to a simple problem.

I have a mac mini with an external USB drive connected to it and I would like access to it over my wireless home network while connected with my Powerbook.

Both systems are running up-to-date 10.4.8.

I have file sharing turned on the Mini.

I successfully login to the Mini using the Mini admin user name and password.

I can successfully connect to the Mini with my Powerbook but only get access to my home directory. When I look at the 'desktop' folder of the home directory on my Mini I see no icon for the USB drive (like I do when I look at the actual desktop) and when I tried creating an alias to the USB drive that doesn't appear in the desktop directory as well.

I have explained this problem to some friends that are pretty familiar with Macs and they all seemed to think it should just 'automagically' work or that there was some simple thing I am not doing or some single thing I set to the wrong setting..

Can anyone help!?!? This problem has been haunting me for months!!

Look at the 3rd party utility "SharePoints":
http://www.hornware.com/sharepoints/

you could also use NFS. i'm not in front of a mac system right now, but it would go something like on the mini using terminal

$share /Volumes/<usb_drive_name>

and then on the powerbook

$mount <mini_ip>:/Volumes/<usb_drive_name> /Users/<username>/Desktop/<mount_point>

you would obviously need to fill in your information where you see <> above. for the mount_point, just create an empty folder on your desktop and substitute the name of the new folder for <mount_point>.

of course, this is a very UNIX-y way of doing this. it could be that you are just looking in the wrong place for your usb drive. you can't just share out your desktop and find mounted devices there. you need to share /Volumes because that is where periferals are actually mounted. like i said, i'm not in front of a mac right now, so i can't check.

Hrmm... okay.. so for some reason I am having problems getting the SharePoints to work. I seemingly enter everything okay but when I finally connect over the network to my newly shared USD external drive it appears as an empty directory. :-(

So then I tried the unix-y way of doing things when when I tried the 'mount' command I got an error that says 'no such directory' ?

Could the problem be that the USB external drive I am trying to mount it formatted in MS-DOS FAT32 format..? I remember selecting that disk format to be able to juggle the USB drive between PC and Mac systems (although I am completely Mac-based now -- but it would be nice to have option of having it having it most compatible to connect to PCs and devices that allow external USB storage).

Any other tips? Should the %mount command work regardless of how the drive is formatted?

If I do need to reformat it to share it across my network (which doesn't make sense if you ask me if my local machine can read files off it no problem) is there a format that is friendly to sharing across a network AND also compatible with 'plug and play' read/write with other OSes?

Thanks to everyone that has taken a moment to read through my post and try and think of a solution and extra special thanks to those that have shared their expertise so far -- it's *GREAT* to have a resource like this site to navigate this 'edge case' situations that extend beyond my general Mac knowledge.

Have you tried,
Enable windows file sharing then in the connect to box,
smb://username:password@IPAddress/USB_drive_name
This works for me, I then just wrote a small applescript to connect multiple drives like this for me and put it in my startup items.
If you would like the applescript code let me know and I'll post it.

Try adding a alias of the drive inside of your desktop folder.

found fix for me
 

I know this post is a bit old now, but for people searching for an answer to this problem I'll post my two cents worth...
I had the same Issue and found that yes sharepoints will fix it...

however so will another and for me a more likeable fix.

I saw my new ext usb hard drive was formated for compat with windows machines and was a MS-DOS format. I don't use win machines so I told disk utitily to reformat it to the Mac OS Extended (not-Journaled). (remember you'll loose all your data when you do this!!)

Wouldn't you know, now my usb drive showed up on the network with out the need for sharepoints.

The other item doing this fixed for me was through put of the drive. I am using this drive to stream video. On the ms-dos format my out put was broken up and unstable.
Now that the drive is Mac OS Extended (not-Journaled, again to keep speed up) I have no slow downs and my dream of a huge collection of video streaming over my network is real!!!

Hey every1,

Here's how I got this to work. The USB HDD, formatted hfs+, is mounted in Tiger, with Sharepoints setup to share the root and all subfolders (Movies, Music, Pics, etc) then on my XP box I have MacDrive (Commercial, but worth it, because I can install on any XP machine, plug in the HDD, and don't have to worry about the FAT limitations). Might be overkill, but it allows XBMC to stream everything, plus my XP box can read/write perfectly.

Just my two cents ne way.

Nd

Thats all silly
 

Hey if you want to share you USB HD over a network just follow these easy instructions

Alright, first fire up terminal, so in n00b terms cmd+space type "terminal" hit enter

then type df -k to see what your drive is called example shown below of my external drive:

/dev/disk1s3 709869510 45908 717279799 0% /Volumes/FreeAgent_750GB_Seagate

So the example drive is called "/Volumes/FreeAgent_750GB_Seagate"

So lets su up to root by doing the following sudo su -

Type your root/admin password and you'll be presented with a command prompt that looks like this:

computer-name:~root#

So next you want to do "vi /etc/smb.conf" and then hit "shift g" to go to the bottom of the page.

Hit "o" to start a new line for editing then insert the following:

[Any Name you want for the drive]
comment = Any name you want for the drive
path = /path/to/usbdrive/shown/in/your/df-k/
browseable = yes
read only = yes

Next hit "esc" and then "colon" and finally "wq"

Samba reads the smb.conf file continuously so there is no need to reload samba

So to connect just "cmd+k" and put "smb://IP/commentname"

So mine is smb://192.168.1.110/FreeAgent_750GB_Seagate

You'll need to type in your 'allowed' username and password but your done. This will work for Mac/Windows/Unix/Linux/XBMC using samba/CIFS

Cheers!

Thanks for the tip ...
 

about Sharepoints!

I even gave them 5 bucks ... saved me buying an Airport, just to share my USB drive!

Networking Usb External Drive
 

THANK YOU eagle602. I had the exact same problem. Looked high and low for an answer...until i found your post here. Thanks for the tip, buddy!

You can share your external drive by using symbolic link to link the external volume (e.g., "/Volume/My Book") to a folder in the boot up drive in Terminal.

ln -s <source folder> <destination folder>

I've not played around with terminal much at all, so wasn't comfortable with that.
Sharepoints let me do exactly what I was wanting it to, share my external FireWire drive on my iBook with my partner on his MacMini.
(all 3 partitions were in the Mac OS Extended format, though I do have them set for Journaled, and they were still not showing up on the network.)

I had tried putting aliases to the specific folder he was needing in my public folder, putting the alias in his dropbox, and even setting up an account for him to access remotely. (It is a folder with many movie files... so I didn't want to pull it back onto my iBooks hd for him to access.) None of these were letting him access the external FireWire hard drive.

d/l and installed Sharepoints, set up the 3 partitions, and good to go. He is currently pulling the files he wants from my external to his external FireWire drive. :)

Thanks!
 

Hello Luvablemarmot,

That was a great tip, works fine for me now.
Did not want to convert to HFS since I may need to plug the thing into a windows machine or my KISS player one day.

btw, it´s more or less obvious, but still:

make sure you put

read only = yes

if you want to write stuff (I do)

browseable = yes

refers to visibility ? like C$ is a ´hidden´ share, putting
´browseable = no´ means the share is not ´announced´ on the network right ?

I chose to switch it off, gotta see where rendezvous ( ah, I mean Bonjour ) gets its announcing from....

Thanks again,

Re: Sharing external USB drive over network
 

I also wanted to send out a big thanks to Luvablemarmot. This solution worked perfectly! I've been giving myself a headache for awhile trying to get my external drive to show up on our home network. I didn't realize at first that the FAT32 format was creating the problem, so this was a great solution.

To any total newbies out there who may be looking at this in the future, don't be afraid of the terminal. Follow these instructions exactly, and you'll be just fine. Also, don't forget to turn on Windows Sharing in both the machine with the USB drive attached to it, and any Mac machines you'd like to be able to the drive over the local network.

Thanks again!

I tried everything suggested here and it didn't work.

Sharepoints freezes up, and I get the "unexpected quit" do you want to advise Apple? It just won't work.

I tried terminal, it shows my drive /Volumes/MyDrive
I go through the whole process, but when I smb://192.168.1.100/MyDrive

No such directory exists

Geeez!

Great step by step instructions!
 

Thanks luvablemarmot for the step-by-step instructions on how to do this. I used it to share an external firewire volume to a PC on the same network.

Best,
Tolga Morawski

At last
 

Thanks to red dwarf smeghead I've at last been able to mount a USB hard drive over my network. I tried ALL the other suggestions on this forum - and other forums - NONE worked except this one - and it was so simple too, it baffles me why everybody else was suggesting such complicated solutions.

Thanks again, I know this forum is a bit old so not sure if reddwarfsmeghead will get this message, but it again shows the usefulness of the internet and old messages are still useful for years to come.

What about SL/Lion?
 

Hey guys - I just tried following the instructions for editing the smb.conf, and once I got the changes applied (after shutting down File Sharing, which seemed to be locking up the .conf-file) the drive still didn't show up on another Mac on the same network.

Now, I know Apple made some changes to SMB-handling in OS X Lion, so I'm wondering if anyone else has had any luck applying luvablemarmot's instructions on a setup where the sharing machine is running Snow Leopard, and other machines on the network run Lion?