Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
I, too am having a problem connecting an external hard drive that is FAT32. If someone reformatted their external hard drive for Mac and if it worked, please let me know. This has been a problem for me for the last few days and its driving me nuts as well. Thanks to all!

If you reformat that hard drive using Mac OS Journal, you will see the external drive over the network. I had the external drive connected through USB and formatted for Mac OS Journal and could see it from any other computer in the network.
 
I am having that same issue!

I have spent hours over several years trying to figure out how to see external HDs from one mac to the other. I didn't realize others are having the same issue.
My drives are formated FAT32 for cross platform reasons.
It works fine when they are connected to a PC and i network to a PC from my mac and it has the shared feature on. But when i firewire it to one of my macs the other mac will not see it. My PC will pick it up thru the network when i network to the mac. I have mac tech support researching and its been one week now in the waiting for a response. This has been an issue for years. I feel that only if the externals are formatted for mac will they then be seen over the network between two macs. Very Unfortunate!
 
unfortunately, having it (external hd) formatted to Mac OS Extended is the only way to share it. FAT 32 ,16, etc, will not be able to share it among other mac's (that is what the apple care tech told me). I guess we will have to wait until both can be supported for FAT and Mac OS Extended.
 
Tech support told me NG

Well just as I thought. If the hard drive is formatted FAT 32 it will not be seen on the network between mac computers. I will have to mount them on my PC and use the share option then all my macs can read and write to them thru the network. Another option is the new airport extreme and time capsule. These units have the option of mounting hard drives directly to them so everyone can read and write.
But is it necessary to spend more?
 
Well just as I thought. If the hard drive is formatted FAT 32 it will not be seen on the network between mac computers. I will have to mount them on my PC and use the share option then all my macs can read and write to them thru the network. Another option is the new airport extreme and time capsule. These units have the option of mounting hard drives directly to them so everyone can read and write.
But is it necessary to spend more?

just share from your pc lol...
i cant figure out how to do it though, i hate how windows just doesnt work. hmph.
 
just share from your pc lol...
i cant figure out how to do it though, i hate how windows just doesnt work. hmph.

actually it works perfectly from the PC to the Mac, it's the Mac that has the problem here... get over yourself :)
 
i am over myself.

i cannot remote login nor map to my mac from my pc. albeit, i only tried for 10minutes.

:(
If i remember correctly this is how I did it once. BUT I will not use that route. It was not fun. I stick with the PC as the server. It works without any issues. Read my other replies and now I can "get over myself".
U need to go to sharing on your mac thru system preferences and U need to check WINDOWS SHARING on your mac. On the bottom of that window U will see a message WINDOWS USERS CAN ACCESS YOUR COMPUTER AT \\............\USER NAME.
My PC has XP on it. I created a connection from the "new network" [or connectin] option on the left side of the window that appears when you open MY COMPUTER from the "start" command on the bottom left of your PC screen. I used the address given by mac. U should be able to continue from there.
 
If you do a "Get Info" on this drive, is the "Ignore ownship..." box checked? If so uncheck it and try remote mounting it again.
 
I have three external drives, two are mac formated and one is Fat32. Of the two mac formated disks one is my time machine drive and the other just a catch all. Both are seen in the network. The Fat32 is not seen but I only have it formated that way because that is what the PS3 reads and I store movies on it.
 
I tried a couple of the suggestions here, and the only one that worked for me was connecting to server as SMB://name.local or SMB://ipaddress
I was able to see all my sharepoints including my external.

AFP wouldnt show it. Make sure you are sharing through SMB as well. Try that let us know if it works.
 
I tried a couple of the suggestions here, and the only one that worked for me was connecting to server as SMB://name.local or SMB://ipaddress
I was able to see all my sharepoints including my external.

AFP wouldnt show it. Make sure you are sharing through SMB as well. Try that let us know if it works.

I am having same problem. the fat32 disk is on my mother's computer. how do you set up to share through smb? I tried the smb://ipaddress but it has been "connecting" for about an hour!!.

She has file sharing on and I can connect to the internal drive via afp

thx
 
same problem here. It simply can't work with FAT 32 no matter what the disk is. I use Bootcamp in my iMac, the PC partition in the harddisk doesn't appear either when I'm using my MBA to connect to iMac.
 
in the finder go to.
1. "go" menu
2. "connect to server"
3. locate imacs IP address/IP name. E.g. 192.168.1.2 or imac.local
4. hit connect
5. when prompted enter user name/password of an administrator account FROM THE IMAC. (some people will use the account from the computer trying to access, instead of using an account from the computer they are trying to access).

firewire drive aswell as any other USB/FW drives connected to the computer will show after login is successful, click desired drive and enjoy!

I had the same problem with my external FAT32 disks, and I used DoFoT9's solution with a small variation and it works

Finder > Go > Connect to Server
there you should put smb://xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx (your other mac's IP address)
it will ask you if you want to mount it's disks and Presto!!!

Thanks for a great tip
 
I had the same problem with my external FAT32 disks, and I used DoFoT9's solution with a small variation and it works

Finder > Go > Connect to Server
there you should put smb://xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx (your other mac's IP address)
it will ask you if you want to mount it's disks and Presto!!!

Thanks for a great tip

good 2 see that someone noticed what i said hahaha. its pretty hard getting it to work, it should just come up when you connect to a computer via the "Shared" disks on the side of any Finder window...
 
I, too am having a problem connecting an external hard drive that is FAT32. If someone reformatted their external hard drive for Mac and if it worked, please let me know. This has been a problem for me for the last few days and its driving me nuts as well. Thanks to all!

So can someone confirm that you can't share FAT32 formatted drives over a network between two mac computers in Leopard? I can get my MBP to see my Mini's HD easily but not the external USB hard drive connected to it...

I also have problems connecting to an external FAT32 disk. I have two firewire disks mounted on a PowerPC G5, one Mac OS Plus formatted and the other one FAT32. The Mac OS formatted disk is accessible from a network connection from a MacBook Pro, but the FAT32 is not. I have tried by making the FAT32 disk a shared volume but the problem remains. Thanks.
 
I had the same problem with my external FAT32 disks, and I used DoFoT9's solution with a small variation and it works

Finder > Go > Connect to Server
there you should put smb://xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx (your other mac's IP address)
it will ask you if you want to mount it's disks and Presto!!!

Thanks for a great tip

It worked!! First I added the FAT32 disk in the Shared Folder list (in System Preferences > Sharing) on the machine that has the disk connected via firewire, then I connected to that machine through smb. It worked.
Thanks!!
 
Hey everybody,

P.S. Correct me if i am wrong , Leopard has Finder enhancements that makes you connect to any mac on your network which means that if i get Leopard i can gain access to my ext HDD from any other computer?

Yes, I browse my Mac Pro hdd drive from my MacBook all the time.
 
SMB://yourcomputername.local WORKS!

It works!!! Thanks!

I tried a couple of the suggestions here, and the only one that worked for me was connecting to server as SMB://name.local or SMB://ipaddress
I was able to see all my sharepoints including my external.

AFP wouldnt show it. Make sure you are sharing through SMB as well. Try that let us know if it works.
 
It works! FAT32 Ext. USB; SharePoints (Samba share); Connect To Server smb://

It works, it works!!
On one machine I have a 1TB WD My Book. Formatted FAT32. I could not get it to be seen by my other Mac on my network until now. Thank you, thank you!!!! Setup a Samba share ( I used SharePoints, free version) for your External FAT32 Drive. Then on another Mac go to Finder -> Go -> Connect to Server (apple + K). Then type "smb://xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx (whatever the IP Address of the computer that the FAT32 drive is connected to). You should see a drop down box, after connection, click on whatever name you made for the share. Log in using the other Mac's, the one with the FAT32 drive, administrator user name and password. And like magic you will be able to share a FAT32 External drive between Mac's. w000t, w00t!!!!!
 
Untick AFP and have only SMB Ticked for FAT 32

Just in case you are still struggling with this.
TIP: You still can't get FAT 32 external shares working under Leopard if you have AFP ticked in the shares, untick AFP and only share via SMB.
It should work then!
- You should even see the shared FAT32 folder / volume automatically on your Finder side bar - no server connect tricks should be needed, but are always a good fall back.

From what I have gathered: AFP seem to monopolize the sharing and only handles Mac related file systems and won't really mount anything else - I thought that somehow that having both SMB and AFP ticked that the OS would selectively broadcast/handle all types of file systems (depending on what you have set-up) - but I guess not :\ Bummer!
Although SMB works just fine for all intents and purposes!
:)
Good Luck!
 
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.