How to share external hard drive across wireless home network

Hi.
I have just about completed converting my life from PC to Mac. I am very excited. I have three Macs at home and they are all blue tooth, etc. I am easily able to share a printer hooked to one of them, but can not find a way to find, share or use an external hard drive attached to another. How would one begin looking for that device in order to read from or write to it?
Thanks.
Farzad

I have 3 Macs Airport networked at home; one G4 has an extrnal hard drive attached. If that hard drive is on, when I log into the particular G4 computer from my iMac Duo2Core (Go>Connect to Server) I get the option of logging into the G4 "Macintosh HD" or to the attached "External Hard Drive." The User Accounts at home do not have Admin privileges to the other computers, except my iMac Duo2Core which has admin privileges to the other 2. I did nothing special in setting up the network. I don't know if I can log into the external from the other G4 which does not have admin privileges to the G4 with the hard drive - never had occasion to test.
So, you might first try a set up like mine, (one admin computer for the whole network, and if you can't access the hard drive from non-admin computers, then (and if safe) give all computers admin privilegs across your network (System Preferences>Accounts - check the box that says "Allow user to administrate this computer" - for each user account). If you have young kids or folks who shouldn't have admin privileges, I'd think long and hard about doing it the second way though.
Hope this helps!
iMac 20" Due2Core; iMac 17" Duo2Core; iMac G4; eMac G4; iBook G3 Mac OS X (10.4.8) 2G Ram

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Apple has a 'bunch' of articles on sharing iTunes.
Or look at the networking. And then whether you want to put MacDrive on the PC, or use NTFS format and NTFS driver (commercial or free MacFUSE).
And probably want to ask or look in iTunes for Mac and Windows discussions, too.
Most of the things I have (bookmarked) deal with Leopard, not Tiger, so not sure but pretty sure networking is now slightly different.
http://www.apple.com/support/itunes/

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Mickey,
Here is your original topic:
Need Help with my External Hard Drive
PV seldom if ever visits this forum as it is for Macs made before 1998.

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curious r wrote:
Does Time Machine only work with Time Capsule or will it work with other external hard drives?
Yes, Time Machine works with external HDs. That's how most folks back up. Connecting directly via USB or FireWire is much faster then Ethernet, but you're right -- all disk drives fail, sooner or later.
The folks at my Apple store tell me that Time Capsule can be used just to store data but I have heard otherwise in the forums.
It can be used for Time Machine backups and other things, but trying to use the same one for both presents problems, because of the way Time Machine works (filling-up all the available space before deleting the oldest backups) and the fact that you can't partition a Time Capsule's internal HD to separate your backups from the other data. Plus, you can't back up the other data.
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What is the difference is between USB and firewire?
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Yes. Files you put there (other than Time Machine backups) are just like files on any other disk.
I do realize that Time Capsule only backs up new files and any changes so I wonder how long I can continue with this arrangement.
Yes, that's a concern. It varies greatly depending on how you use your Mac, but our general "rule of thumb" is that it needs 2-3 times the size of the data it's backing-up.
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Home share external hard drive

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I have 3 Macs Airport networked at home; one G4 has an extrnal hard drive attached. If that hard drive is on, when I log into the particular G4 computer from my iMac Duo2Core (Go>Connect to Server) I get the option of logging into the G4 "Macintosh HD" or to the attached "External Hard Drive." The User Accounts at home do not have Admin privileges to the other computers, except my iMac Duo2Core which has admin privileges to the other 2. I did nothing special in setting up the network. I don't know if I can log into the external from the other G4 which does not have admin privileges to the G4 with the hard drive - never had occasion to test.
So, you might first try a set up like mine, (one admin computer for the whole network, and if you can't access the hard drive from non-admin computers, then (and if safe) give all computers admin privilegs across your network (System Preferences>Accounts - check the box that says "Allow user to administrate this computer" - for each user account). If you have young kids or folks who shouldn't have admin privileges, I'd think long and hard about doing it the second way though.
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iMac 20" Due2Core; iMac 17" Duo2Core; iMac G4; eMac G4; iBook G3 Mac OS X (10.4.8) 2G Ram

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Under 'options' I checked all of the boxes, including AFT, SMB and FTP (was I suppose to do this?)
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Is there anyone out there who has had success with sharing an external hard drive over a network from Mac to Mac? I just can't figure this out! It's so weird. When I look in the network places I see the icon for my wife's computer, and the PC ones of my brother in law's drives connected to the network. And ONE of those PC icons (you know, the one with the blue screen of death on them?) is labeled with "mac934ffsg" or something similar. I've been experimenting and when I add the hard drive in "shared", or if I add another folder in 'shared' on her computer it is THIS icon in the network that is updated.
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Hello,
i have an external hard drive which i store all my drum samples and sound library on and files are contantly changing, adding new sounds, deleting old ones etc ..
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The question you pose is conditional, in that you should have more than an exact
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{This question (& my reply) should've been in their own thread & not at the end
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Hi looking for a little help and i think i can find it here . So i have a new ipad mini 16gb black 2 months old I love it exsept for the 16gb. I have alot of photos and i would like to put them on my ipad but to much . I was thinking could I could use my imac to share a 120gb usb external hard drive over my network and see all my photos on my ipad by connecting to that hard drive over my network iv done this on my macbook but what about a ipad ?
any answers help thanks

I started out with the same problem a few years back. And this led me to think wider.
I have a Mac Mini (as a blind server) hanging in my network. It has a 24/7 external HD (24/7 is important as all cheap HD are not made to run day in day out, I wonder even if the Lacie d2 Network2 is a 24/7 HD) attached to it that is accessible to the whole network.
My Mac Mini is also a print server (no need for expensive network cards in printers), fax for the whole network and answers the phone when nobody is there. If a fax or call is logged it emails it to the people who need to know about it.
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Good luck hope it helps.

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The USB port on the AirPort Extreme has always been borderline as far as being able to provide sufficient power for a hard drive. It is not a high power port like you would find on a computer.
If you have not been using a powered USB hub with the AirPort Extreme....it is possible that the power supply on the Extreme has aged a bit, and it no longer puts out quite as much power as before.
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http://osxdaily.com/2012/01/04/format-an-external-hard-drive-or-usb-flash-drive- for-mac-os-x/
http://reviews.cnet.com/8301-13727_7-57600320-263/using-external-drives-to-save- space-on-your-mac-format-them-first/
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I am sure if I spent the time reading those pages, I would lose more time than I would save with a Firewire drive if I ever had to do a complete restore. If you ever have to do a complete restore, just run it overnight. Do like I do, save your money, maybe buy some Apple stock, and you will make more than enough to compensate yourself for the extra time it might take.
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When it comes to backup, people should be speedy about getting a backup drive. If the extra cost of Firewire causes a delay doing that, it could easily cost more time and trouble than the extra speed will ever save them.
macjack wrote:
Bruce De Benedictis wrote:
USB2 ... It may be a touch slower if you should ever have to recover a volume
Please check your information...
http://www.lyberty.com/tech/terms/usb.html
http://www.firewire-1394.com/firewire-vs-usb.htm
These were my first 2 hits on Google, there are pages more you can read at your leisure.

How to share external hard drive across wireless home network

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