Sharing files across macs

[mediamab]

So... I have a new iMac MacBook air and aebs with a USB drive, both computers are set up as the same user and passed and with full file sharing running.

From the iMac I can see the laptop under the shared heading but clicking on it jus sits for a while and then says unable yo connect, the same thing happens when I click connect as. This happens from the laptop also and also exactly the same when trying to connect to the drive on the aebs.

Is this normal? My understanding is that it isn't?

They only way it works is to go the finder finder and going through connect to server and this is fine, any ideas what to do?

Also my understanding is that the drive on the aebs should automatically connect but this doesn't? Which means everytimd I restart the laptop I have to manually reconnect to the drive which is annoying as I use itfor time machine.

Maybe I'm wrong but my understanding is that it should work better than this?

I would also like to easily connect both macs together so I can keep files synced easier.

Any ideas guys?

 

[thegoldenmackid]

Have you turned File Sharing On via System Preferences.

 

[rockstarjoe]

Not sure about the aebs drive, but I can tell you from my personal experience having two computers with the same user account / password trying to share files caused me all kinds of problems. Eventually I removed the user on my laptop and created a new account with a different name, and suddenly everything worked fine again.

 

[mediamab]

Yes file sharing is on.

I'll try changing the user accounts.

Any other ideas?

How SHOULD Things be working?

It's driving mr mad :-(

 

[rockstarjoe]

What you are seeing is not normal. You should be able to click on the computer name under the sidebar in finder and have it automatically connect and show the "Public" folder for that computer. If you have any other folders set to be shared on the other computer these will be listed as well.

 

[BullBoyKennels]

I simply turn on file sharing, and format my external or additional drives as HFS were as FAT32 takes just a bit of setting up to get working on all macs. Unless your running windows.