Sharing a Firewire external drive over Ethernet

Sorry, this should be in the "Networking" forum, BUT IT DOESN'T SEEM TO EXIST. . .
Have 500GB Firewire external drive hooked to G5 for backup. Just want to have it mount our other Mac's desktop so they can also use it over the network for backup. I CANNOT find ANY WAY to do this glaringly obvious desired feature within OSX!!!
WHY isn't there a "Share this Drive on the Network" checkbox in "Get Info"? So you could easily share any USB or Firewire storage device instantly!
Thanks!

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How do I access my external drive over the web with my iPhone. The drive is attached to my Time Machine.

How do I access my external drive over the web with my iPhone. The drive is attached to my Time Machine. I am new to Apple and am trying to get all my stuff working together.

This is not a supported feature of iPhone or Time Capsule.

Time Machine backup with firewire external drive

I am having issues with a brand new firewire external drive and I am not sure if it is a drive issue, a configuration issue or what.
I have a 6tb Firewire hooked up to my machine. This is the drive which is being used as the destination for Time Machine. I have had this drive for awhile and seem to be having no problem with it and have not had an issue with Time Machine previously. I have a new added a second firewire drive (2tb) in daisy chain to the first (the 6tb). Whenever this drive is included in my TM backup profile, TM fails. Whenever I remove it, TM seems to work. I am wondering if the issue is the sequence of the drives (the TM drive perhaps needing to be the last in the chain), an issue with TM or perhaps an indication of a hardware problem with the new drive itself. Anyone got a clue?
Thanks.

Okay,apparantly no one else seems to be having this issue. That being the case then, how do I find a log file to get an error code so I can try to determine *why* Time Machine is failing?

FireWire external drives and bootable DVD's

I have 2 Mac Pro running 10.5.2 with all recent updates:
1) Mac Pro *****UXYL model MacPro3,1 (early 2008)
2) Mac Pro *****00PX model MacPro1,1 ROM de démarrage : MP11.005D.B00
On the second I can mount and boot with a FireWire external drive. I can also use an utility DVD or CD like DiskWarrior.
On the first one, nothing of this is possible : I cannot mount a FireWire drive only an USB drive. I cannot use CD or DVD bootables except of course Install Disks (version 1.1)
I tried to obtain an answer from Apple support without any success.
<post edited by host>

The ROM has been reported in the past to be one element of the issue, but in general Apple has made it abundently clear that you can't install an older operating system on a Mac nor boot from an older operating system than the Mac than came with it in these two articles:
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=303315
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=25517
And as far as I know no one has been able to downgrade the ROM to an older version than it shipped with either to force boot an older operating system.

Sharing external drive over network - problem

Hey guys,
I searched the forum, but nothing posted to other threads helped.
I want to share a LaCie external USB drive over my network. It consists of two macs: a mac mini and a macbook running OSX 10.4.9.
The external drive is formated in FAT32. I enabled sharing in the system pref. but I don't see it when trying to connect. I installed SharePoints and shared it from there, still nothing. I tried connecting using the "afp://..:" stuff, but I get an error message, saying I cannot connect.
Got some ideas?

Thanks for your reply
Did you use the little "Show File System Attributes" yet?
Yep, it's r&w
Did you use the enable Windows(smb)Sharing to Shared?
Yes
Did you add Users yet?
Yes, my username which i use to connect is added.

Can't access External Drive over Sharing

Since upgrading to Leopard I am struggling to access the external hard drives connected to my iMac, via sharing from my laptop. For some reason only one of the drives appears which happens to be the drive I use for my Time Machine.
Things were much better with Tiger, you selected the mac you want to access, logged on and selected the volume that was available to you. What the **** have they done to Leopard? Nothing's changed with my externals, just the OS on my two macs.

If you open the Sharing Preferences and select the File Sharing checkbox you will see a list of shared folders. Add your external drive to the list, adjust the users/permissions as you want them and you should be all set.

Can't get FireWire External Drives to Show on Network

Ok I'm stumped and I'm feeling really foolish. I'm sure I'm missing something basic here, but I can't get it. Maybe one of you can see the issue.
So. The setup:
The computer "out back:"
G5 w/10.3.9
Exabyte 1U Packet Loader via Firewire 800.
In the Firewire chain after the packet loader: two LaCie d2 Firewire hard drives, both connected via FW 800.
The "other" computers:
An array of G4s with either 10.3.9 or 10.4.9. All connected via ethernet.
Here's the issue: when I had the two firewire drives connected to another (G3 Blue and White on 10.3.9) machine, I could go to "network" connect via the admin name/password, and the two external firewire drives would be options for me to connect to. Now, I can connect fine to the "out back" computer, connect with admin username and password, and see the computer in all it's glory just fine. BUT no drives. Not even an option. No access at all.
I can see the two drives on the desktop of the "outback" computer just fine. Retrospect sees them just fine, because I use that to backup one drive to the other. But no network access.
What I've done:
Checked ownership on the two drives. Set to "read and write" for everyone.
Repaired permissions, redid the combo update. repaired permissions again.
Turned sharing off and back on again.
Thoughts? Questions? What am I missin' here? What else do you need to know?
Thanks!
Brian
G4s and G5 Mac OS X (10.3.9)
G4s and G5 Mac OS X (10.3.9)

Ok that was a quick fix...
First: I was having no problem seeing the drives on the machine they were attached to.
Second: I was having no problems finding computers on the network.
BUT: I was having problems seeing the FireWire drives from the network, something I had been able to do before with no problem.
SOLUTION: I had "Windows Sharing" turned ON in the Sharing Prefences Panel. Once I turned that off, and just had "Personal File Sharing" turned on, it worked just fine.
Thanks for all your help!
Best
Brian
G4s and G5 Mac OS X (10.3.9)

Create shared library on external drive from scratch

I have seen many posts about creating shared iTunes libraries on external drives with many different configurations, but mostly with pre-existing libraries. My question is creating the library from scratch. The purpose is obviously to share songs among several computers AND only have one copy of a song as to not take up unnecessary disk space on several computers.
All of our songs are on an external USB hard-drive attached to Airport Xtreme. Every song is in album folder, and every album folder is in an artist folder (very organized). All the artist folders (with their album and then song contents) are in a root folder called "Songs" on the external hard-drive.
We have upgraded our three Macs (iMac, MBP and MacMini) to Leopard and deleted all iTunes folders on each local hard drive (there was nothing in them anyway). We now want to create ONE iTunes folder on the hard drive so that each computer can access it. What are the steps? Here is what I "think" I've learned here on the postings with my questions:
1) First I opened iTunes on my first, main computer (iMac) and went into "Preferences" to change the iTunes music folder to [Ext HD]:iTunes:iTunes Music. The option, "Copy to music folder..." is deselected. (This will also be done on the other computers).
2) Now what to do? I could just move all of my song artist folders with their album subfolders and music files inside them, into the "iTunes Music" folder. But then what do I click to get iTunes to see all the songs and put them in its database? The other option is click "Add to Library" - but then don't I have to select all the individual songs? (I actually tried the latter method and it kept crashing). Can I just move all the folders into [Ext HD}:iTunes:iTunes Music folder and click something to get it to create its database based on all the music files that are now in its subfolders?
3) Next step. I have seen many people write that they then create an "Alias" and put the Alias in their "Music" folder on their LOCAL, computer's hard drive. Could someone now explicitly, step-by-step, describe how this is done? I assume I go to the external hard drive. Am I creating an alias of the entire "iTunes" folder, or of the "iTunes Music" subfolder, or of the library file??? Please answer this specifically.
So now I have "XXX alias" that I copy to my local, computer's hard drive and put it on my desktop. I take out the "....alias" word, and drag it to my local "Music" folder. It asks me to replace the existing folder/file, and I say yes. Correct? And then I do this on all three computers, correct?
4) Finally, after I've done all of this, I still have the following functionality questions -
4a) When we now add to the library, either from a CD or online purchase, ONE copy of the music should go in the "iTunes Music" folder on the external drive, correct?
4b) This system means that all three computers MUST have the same iTunes library, playlists, etc, correct? The downside of this system is that you cannot personalize libraries for each computer and just share the actual music files, correct? (If so, is there another process [steps 1-4 above] that results in a more customizable system where *ONLY ONE COPY* of the actual song file is shared?)
Sorry for the length of the message, and the questions. Truly I have read all the postings but was unable to map out my plan before I go and creating, finally, this one set of music that we can share. In advance, thank you all for your help.

I was afraid you'd say that, because I'm a long time Mac guy and I don't have the perfect answer. Have you ever messed with remote desktop? That'd seem to give her full access and control, something I personally wouldn't do, although it may work for you.
Another thought came to me that might work: copy over the complete library to her machine, and then when you do another major shoot, create a new catalog, edit, etc.and then import as catalog to you main one while sending her the new one.
I am sure there are more elegant solutions, but these are a couple of ways.

Booting from an external drive over usb

Hey, has anyone else had any problems booting from an external? I have an external lacie drive that I keep a clone backup on (using superduper) and usually have it connected with firewire400. I know it works because i've accidently booted using it before, but recently the firewire port on it died so i've been using usb instead.
Now the problem, holding option on my macbook starting, I get no options to choose from. If i have the mac osx dvd in, it pops up so I know it's not a problem with my macbook. It is possible to boot from usb correct? Everything i've read has said it's possible... I'm not sure why my external drive isn't coming up. I know it works over usb because I've used it alot since the firewire port died on it. I checked in the disk utility and it does say it's bootable, and afterall it's cloned using superduper like i said before...
I have 2 partitions on the drive, is that a problem? It never was before, I've booted off it many times before using firewire though. Can someone help me out here? Very annoying as I'm replacing the HD in my macbook and neeeeeeed to get on my external.
When I asked the guy at the genius bar awhile ago he just said it was probably a problem because my old internal HD died and he said sometimes it causes the macbook to not even be able to get as far as the point to boot from another source. Well now I have a new working drive in it, so I know that's not the problem. It just doesn't show up to boot from anymore, ugh.

Sounds like your clone isn't bootable. Have you tried the following:
Repairing the Hard Drive and Permissions
Boot from your OS X Installer disc. After the installer loads select your language and click on the Continue button. When the menu bar appears select Disk Utility from the Installer menu (Utilities menu for Tiger and Leopard.) After DU loads select your hard drive entry (mfgr.'s ID and drive size) from the the left side list. In the DU status area you will see an entry for the S.M.A.R.T. status of the hard drive. If it does not say "Verified" then the hard drive is failing or failed. (SMART status is not reported on external Firewire or USB drives.) If the drive is "Verified" then select your OS X volume from the list on the left (sub-entry below the drive entry,) click on the First Aid tab, then click on the Repair Disk button. If DU reports any errors that have been fixed, then re-run Repair Disk until no errors are reported. If no errors are reported click on the Repair Permissions button. Wait until the operation completes, then quit DU and return to the installer. Now restart normally.
If DU reports errors it cannot fix, then you will need Disk Warrior (4.0 for Tiger, and 4.1 for Leopard) and/or TechTool Pro (4.6.1 for Leopard) to repair the drive. If you don't have either of them or if neither of them can fix the drive, then you will need to reformat the drive and reinstall OS X.

A Firewire External Drive to use as Bootable drive?

Hello fellow Apple enthusiasts,
1.1 I was hoping one of you might care to suggest how would I go about using my Firewire (FW) drive as a bootable drive?(I believe during restart I press the "T" key to initialize this process)
It is a 120 GB drive that I have partitioned into 2 parts a 30 GB which has my apps, etc, and an 80 GB section with work files.
1.2 Should I just use an app like Super Duper to clone my G3 and iBook HD's? (hmmm maybe just one of them) But that would limit my ability to use the FW for all and any HD's
1.3 I do have a bona-fide edition of Tech Tool 4, should I make an "eDrive" on the FW to reboot from? or install Tech tool on the FW as an app itself?
1.4 Or possibly one of you may know of a better suggestion to make a part of the Firewire drive a drive that can rescue other Macs, namely my own

1.1 I don't think 'T' is what you're after - that will boot your computer as an external FW drive.
Given a bootable FW drive, you can either (1) choose it as your Startup Disk in System Preferences, or (2) hold down the Option key while restarting/booting and choose the drive from the options displayed. I believe that (1) is recommended but there might be situations where (2) is the only option.
1.2 I'm not sure what you mean by "limit my ability to use the FW for all and any HD's". Do you want to use the drive to backup all your computers?
It is perfectly possible to clone a HD to a partition of an external FW drive. To do this, you can partition the FW drive in Disk Utility making sure that the partitions you plan to clone to are big enough, of course. Doing this will erase any data on the FW drive, however, so be sure to back it up. Some people also recommend writing zeros over the disk before proceeding. Again, Disk Utility has options to do this. When you partition, make sure that you choose the same type of file system as you're using on your macs.
I've never used Super Duper, but Carbon Copy Cloner will certainly let you create a bootable clone a HD on a partition of the FW drive. I use it for this purpose and have happily booted from the clones when necessary. If you consider CCC, be sure to read the documentation - especially "B4 U Clone" - so that you prepare the external drive correctly and take the steps you need to to ensure a successful cloning operation. For details see http://www.bombich.com/software/ccc.html. Note that the latest version is only for 10.4/10.5, but the earlier version is suitable for 10.2/10.3. I believe the latest version does a very good cloning job. The earlier version does not copy all the extended attributes etc. that you may care about. On the other hand, I have certainly restored successfully from clones made using the earlier version.
Super Duper has an excellent reputation and is supposed to copy extended attributes etc. nearly flawlessly. I can't speak from experience in this case, though, and I don't know how flexible it is in terms of allowing clones to partitions etc. as I've never used it.
1.3 Sorry, can't answer this - I don't know what you're referring to.
1.4 Only that if Super Duper can't do what you want, CCC probably can. Whichever you use, be sure to read and follow the instructions and to test the clone by booting and working from it to assure yourself that it really is satisfactory.
Good luck.
- cfr

Can't boot from my firewire external drive

I have a 80 Gb LaCie firewire drive where I have installed (since Phanter) an operating system. All things were OK until I updated the system to OS X 10.4.10 in my G3 iMac (slot-loading). Since then I was unable to boot from the external drive. I had updated the drive's firmware, installed OS X 10.4.10 in it, but nothing has solved my issue. Can anyone help me with this?
Helder Monteiro
iMac G3 slot-loading Mac OS X (10.4.10) iBook G4 - 10.4.10

Helder,
I apologize if I sounded like I was finding fault with your use of English, which I think you use very well. My own abilities with any foreign language are embarrassingly poor ... & I'm not that great with my native English one either!
My concern was that we were not communicating well enough for me to understand your situation well enough to suggest anything that would not make things worse. I'm still not entirely sure of that but let me review what I believe it to be before proceeding:
You have a LaCie external hard drive that both your iMac & PowerBook recognize when either is started up from its internal copy of 10.4.10. With either one, the drive mounts & you can read & write files on the external without problems. The only problem is neither Mac will start up from the external drive, which has a copy of 10.4.10 installed on it in the same way as with your Mac's internal drives, that being booting from the Tiger installer disk, installing the base version of the OS on it & then updating it to 10.4.10 with some succession of Apple updates downloaded from Apple. You have also tried the PPC version of the 10.4.10 combo update. None of this has resolved the problem.
If this is all true & accurate, then I suggest you start by attaching the drive to one or the other Mac while booted normally & seeing if the external drive appears as a choice in System Preferences > Startup Disk. You do not have to select it if appears; the test is just to see if the Mac recognizes it as having a valid OS version. If it does appear in the list, hover the mouse pointer over it until a popup box appears, which will tell you the version of the OS installed.
If it does not appear in the list, it means there is no valid version of the OS installed. If it does, you could try selecting it & restarting, but I suspect from what you have said, it won't work -- the Mac will display a question mark for a while on startup, eventually give up on the drive & start from the internal one. (If so, don't forget to reset the startup disk to the normal one to speed up future restarts.)
Either way, launch Disk Utility & run the "Repair Disk" function on the external drive. If it finds anything wrong, continue to repeat the repair until it passes. If it reports failure, stop & report that here before continuing.
If the drive was recognized in the system preference, also run the "Repair Permissions" step. (if not, it is unlikely this will be an option.) If the drive passes both tests now, try booting from it again by whatever method you prefer.
If it does not work now, I think you will have to reinstall the OS. If you have room on the drive, an Archive & Install will probably work. If not, you will need to consider "cleaner" install methods, which we can discuss if you wish.
Good luck!

Seeing an external drive via ethernet?

I have an 80 gb external drive hooked up to an EMac. No problem accessing thru there, but I need to access when my PB G4 is hooked up via ethernet. I can see the drive on the EMac hard drive, but get the message;
cannot be found, Insert disk/ connect to the server and wait for it to appear on the desktop
My PB will not see the drive when hooked up directly (USB), power issue?
I would like to just log in and access. Is this possible?

In a regular Mac OS X client installation, when connected via Ethernet, your external drive is not shared - therefore it will not be visible to another computer on the network (ie. your PowerBook). Only Mac OS X Server has the extra sharing capabilities.
However you can still enable sharing of external drives, without having to buy Mac OS X Server, simply by using the donationware utility SharePoints. It will allow you to share just about anything on your Mac.
2.0GHz MacBook, 15" 1.25GHz/12" 1GHz PBs, 2xPPC Mac minis, 12" iBook G4, Mac OS X (10.4.8) Cube, 2xTAMs, iPod 4G & nano 2G, 1G & 2G iPs, AEBS, AX

Using a firewire external drive for Raid

Hi
I posted a question related to this earlier but not specifially on this topic, hence this post.
I was watching Lynda.com video tutorial for servers and noted how easy it seemed to set up a raid solution. However since I am going to use a mac mini for a server I cannot have two harddiscs in it. However I can have a firewire external disc as well as usb 2.0 discs. I figure usb is way to slow, but the firewire should be fast enough..so my question is..can I just buy a firewire disc connect it..use diskutility and set up a raid? Or is there something special I need to concern myself with here i.e special type of external disc etc?
It would be supercool if I could do it this way. Might add, this is low traffic personal server and not a critical server at work..still would be nice with raid though. Then I would do time machine via the usb to an external disc.
Cudos to everyone on the list for all your help.

slightly better than a daisy chained raid array is a multiple bay external firewire enclosure that either offers hardware mirroring or can be mirrored in software. i've used these on client servers before, and they generally work fine.
please be sure to consider the pros and cons of running a mini as a server 24/7, as the 2.5" internal drives aren't generally made to do such things. i usually discourage using minis as servers unless budget or other circumstances prohibit something better.

Looking for suggestions to sync external drives over internet

I have a iMac connected to an external hard drive at my house. I would like to sync this external drive to a another external drive connected to a Mac Mini at my parents house. I would like this sync to happen automatically at night and also be free.
Anyone have any suggestions??

Thanks for the suggestions guys. I checked out the rsync stuff but I think its a little over my head. If I had the time or patience I could create a customized solution like that but it seems more trouble than its worth. I am looking more for an application that does the work for you like Crash Plan.
I tested out CrashPlan last night. I installed it on both machines and it was able to backup the files I need very quickly. It supports the ability to set times for the backup which is a big bonus.
The only problem I run into is that it does not make a 1:1 copy of the data. It backs it up to the destination drive in some weird file format that you can not just access the data. If I experienced a failure I would have to use their restore utility to recover the files.
What I would like is that if the drive at my house fails I can run over to my parents, grab that drive, plug it in and be working exactly as before. Crash Plan is so close to being what I want but I just do not want to have to take the time, and trust that their utility will restore the data when I need.

Want to use a Firewire external drive as my boot drive, few questions thoug

I have an old second gen ppc mini. My hard drive just died. It's been on it's last legs for months, but today it finally stopped booting totally. Ran a hardware test and the drive is bad.
Instead of having to open it, I'd rather just buy an external firewire drive. The prices are easily comparable to an internal anyway. That brings up a few questions.
1. From research on the apple discussions and just good old google, I'm finding it's mostly viable to use an external drive as a boot device, anything I should know?
2. From what I remember, when OS X is installed, the installer asks for drive to install OS to. If I select the firewire drive will it then remember that drive as the boot device, after the install is finished? I don't want to have to select it each time the machine reboots.
3. What happens with the bad internal hard drive? Can it just stay there? Since it's bad will it interfere with the mini operation? I'd rather not have to open the case.
4. Anything special about the external drive that I need to know? I found this one on buy.com...
http://www.buy.com/prod/fd-titanium-ii-firewire-usb-2-0-hard-drive-320gb-7200rpm -ieee-1394a/q/loc/101/203405880.html
Any problem with that one?
I guess if there's anything I'm not thinking of, please let me know.
Thanks...

If I were going to use an external hard drive, I would buy the case from http://www.macsales.com (one example is http://eshop.macsales.com/item/Other%20World%20Computing/MEFW91UAL1K/ ) then buy a hard drive and put it in. The hard drive, depending on manufacturer, will have either a 3 year or 5 year (Seagate is the only one warrantied for 5 years) warranty, unlike the prepackaged units that have a 1 year warranty. Also, if you can get an external case which uses any of the Oxford chipsets, they work well with our macs. Also, some people like the ministack for mac mini usage: http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/ministack/
You can define in system preferences, in startup disk, which hard drive you want the system to boot from.

Sharing a Firewire external drive over Ethernet

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