# Mac can't save to my network hard drive



## tomtomtom (Jul 20, 2011)

I have a home network with both a Mac and PCs. I have an HP md1000h external hard drive hooked up to my ASUS RT-N56U router via USB for shared storage.

My Windows machines can read from and write to the networked drive. My Mac can read from the networked drive just fine but cannot write to to it. When I try to save a file from my Mac to the HP drive I get the error message: 

"The operation cannot be completed because you do not have sufficient privileges for some of the items."

When I select the drive in the Finder and got to Get Info under Sharing and Permissions it says "You can read and write."

When I select the drive in the Finder Sidebar the window says "Connected as: Guest" across the top, along with a button that says "Connect as...". However when I press that button a connection dialog flashes very briefly and then disappears and the drive is removed from the sidebar.

Does anyone know what the problem is? This drive is not listed as "compatible" with Mac but I thought that only referred to the awful backup software that shipped with it. And as I sad I have no problem reading the drive from my Mac. I'm on OS X 10.5.8.

ETA: If I connect the drive to one of my Windows machines and then create a shared folder I can save to that folder from my Mac. That's fine for backups (and it confirms that Mac can save to the drive) but it defeats the purpose of a shared network drive, since I can only save if I'm logged onto the machine to which it is attached. I really wish someone had some advice for me.

Thanks!


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## tomtomtom (Jul 22, 2011)

Well I think I figured it out.

First I went into "System Preferences>Network" and created a new Location corresponding to the name of my Home Network's workgroup (not using a domain controller).

Then when I connect to the Shared Drive through "Finder>Go>Connect to server..." I use a username and password combo from one of my Windows machines and now I have read/write access.

I'm not sure that first step was necessary but it's working so I'm not going to touch it.


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