Using an external Hard drive

I hate to tell you this, but hard drives of any sort (internal or external) were not designed to be accessed, and will not let you access them, from two computers at once. The interface does not matter - it simply will not work.

There are only two workarounds that I know of:
1. Swap the HD between the two computers as needed.
2. Share the HD over a network shared between the two computers (easily done in Mac OS 9, but a royal pain to do in Mac OS X).

 

What's so hard about sharing over a network? Not hard at all, just make sure the computer it's attached to isn't set to sleep.

 

It's a royal pain because the sharing settings only let you share your home directory (to a PC) or your Public folder (to a Mac) - it won't even LET you select other things to share, like external drives - unlike Mac OS 9. If you want to do this in Mac OS X you must fiddle around with some UNIX configuration files in the Terminal, as far as I'm aware.

 

There is no PC mentioned above, he's saying Powermac and TiBook, piece of cake in Mac OS X, -I have never tried with a PC - I use 2 external HDs, smooth...

 

How do you do it then? It seems to me like you can only share your Public folder between Macs on Mac OS X. I would LOVE to be able to do this without the use of the Terminal.

 

What I am hearing is that you have a notebook and want to use the files on the desktop. Under OSX (10.3 - maybe others) there is a tip offered in the Missing Manual that allows for your Home Folder to be sent to an external HDD so that when you log in, you have a central space for your files. Hope this helps.

 

Mounting drives in Mac OS X

I share files all the time between all the macs on my network. In order to mount mac volumes easily rather than just the home folder in Mac OS 10.3 follow these steps.
1. Open "System Preferences"
2. Click on "Network"
3. choose your LAN device (ie built in ethernet) and click "configure"
3. Click on "appletalk"
4. Make "Appletalk" active
5. go back to the main screen in "system preferences"
6. Click on "sharing"
7. Check mark "Personal file sharing" to turn on file sharing
8. Repeat these steps on all machines
9. Once file sharing is on click on the "Finder" icon in the dock
10. Choose "network" in the left hand pane where all of your disk drives are located
11. Choose the machine you are trying to connect to you may have to go into the folder labeled "local"
12. When prompted. Type in the administrator name and password of the machine you are logging into.
13. At this time you should be able to choose the volumes you want and the administrators home folder.

Steps 1-8 are similar in mac os 10.1 and 10.2 except to connect to other macs on your network. Its been a while since I used either of these but as I recall. After following steps 1-8.
9. Switch to "Finder"
10. Choose "Go" in the menu
11. Select "connect to server" in the pull-down shortcut key is apple-k
12. Select the machine you are connecting to in the dialog box.
13. When prompted enter the administrator name and password of the machine you are connecting to.

I apologize if I missed a step anywhere but this should allow you to mount hard drives of other macs on a network.