External drive sharing

[scaniavabis]

hello, I'm new and my first question is:

An external hard drive is attached to my desk PC (Vista SP1) via USB. there are other hard drives connected by the same method.
If I change it's sharing properties and allow it to be shared on my home network all is well until i reboot or even turn the external drive off and back on again. It then forgets the sharing properties I gave it.
Can anyone hazard a guess why it forgets to share when it's been switched off?

TIA

[ACtheTROLL]

are you certain it's forgetting ... if you look at the share it may have a red cross from being switched off or rebooted - but if you explore you'll be able to access it

are all the USB discs connected to your machine ...
switching your machine (the server) off ... it switching off the disc is in effect the same thing.

when you say loosing properties ... is that all the discs

is (are) the discs formatted with NTFS or FAT32

which version of vista ....
have you made the change permanent in your firewall

how many other machines are accessing the share ... what OS are they ...
are they password protected

[ACtheTROLL]

are you sharing folders ... on the disc - or the disc (vista no likee share whole disk
is sharing switched on in network and sharing

[scaniavabis]

blimey, more questions than answers.
Vista SP1 (HP) as stated. Yes I'm certain it's forgetting.
The entire disk is shared because just sharing the folders will not allow me to access the disk or it's folders from the other PC. One needs the whole disk shared for that. No they are not simply disconnected (red cross) and no, one cannot just explore to find them, they are no longer shared as stated.
Only other computer is Vista SP1 (HP) exactly the same.
External drive is FAT 32. If sharing weren't switched on in network and sharing then how would I have been sharing before?. Firewall makes no diffetrece whatever, Avira professional is not preventing access.
Interested why you might think password protection should make a difference, no, none of them are password protected!

[ACtheTROLL]

right
one will deal with your replies in no particular order...
for sharing over a LAN each machine should be password protected and have an account on the sharing PC (server).

browsing won't work sometimes ... too complex to go into ... and even worse XP to Vista (vista to XP is far easier)

... usb drives can be odd in that they sometimes change letters when they or a system is restarted ... immediately messing up all shares.
NTFS allows share properties to be set - so is more secure than a fat32 drive (and it will try to hang on to the letter)
Vista is a little sniffy about sharing ... so you need to be set up right.
The N&SC lets you tick boxes
http://windowshelp.microsoft.com/windows/en-us /help/e20e6875-7210-47bb-bf19-5c60e6ae86151033 .mspx

http://www.home-network-help.com/simple-file-s haring.html

Sharing discs if frowned upon ... better control if you create a folder and share that (even if everything is in it) ... because windows uses the root for system files - it sees disc shares as a vulnerability.

Also you need unique computer names but the same workgroup name within your lan

It's not difficult ... but there are lots of elements that need to be in place

finally if you should map to a network drive ... to make it permanent

to map ... you should enter the path as follows
\\servername\folder (servername and folder should be replaced with real values)
and don't forget to tick the reconnect at logon box

finally the switch on sequence MUST be usb discs, pc - and not the other way round.

[ACtheTROLL]

also see
http://www.techsupportforum.com/networking-for um/file-application-sharing/162721-trouble-see ing-file-sharing-between-vista-xp.html

[scaniavabis]

thanks, all seems hideously complicated. If I leave everything switched on all the time I won't need to bother with any of it.
The only problem I had was that the external was loosing it's "share" when turned off. When it was told to share everything worked fine without passwords and the like. Drive lettres don't change, and XP not involved so I'll just leave it all on, much simpler cheers