External HD (Fat32)>get info> no sharing options

[jbucho]

Hello,

I'm on Leopard and i can't seem to find a way to get sharing options on "get info" for my external HD's.

I need to share them with other computers on my network (wireless), i can share other folders but not my HD's.

In sharing options (system preferences) i add the HD's and add the users and its all good and i click the lock to prevent further changes. When i enter again in the sharing options (system preferences) the Hd's are there but not the users. Maybe that's the problem, some kind of bug.

It should be a easy thing to do.. share HD's in a network..

Can somebody help me out?

Thanks

 

[ElDiabloConCaca]

I don't think FAT32 drives support file/folder-level permissions -- only share-level permissions, and Mac OS X may not fully support the whole spectrum of permissions on FAT32-formatted hard drives.

A little information on this limitation found with super-simple Google searches:

http://forums.macosxhints.com/showthread.php?t=84156

It seems that Mac OS X only likes to share HFS or HFS+ formatted drives. You may be able to work around this limitation by editing the samba config files manually:

http://www.macosxhints.com/article.php?story=20090216180227216

I would recommend, for best compatibility and "share-ability," reformatting those drives as HFS+. Of course, this means you lose compatibility with Windows machines (you can still access them as a share over the network, you just can't hook them directly up to a Windows machine via USB/Firewire/SATA/etc. anymore).