How do I access an external firewire attached to a Mac Mini from my Mac Book?

November 7, 2007 7:25 AM

I have an external firewire drive attached to a Mac Mini. I have enabled file sharing on the Mini and added the external drive as a shared folder. When I browse to the Mini over the network, I can access the internal hard drive but the external does not show up. Both Macs are running Leopard. How can I get it do show up?
posted by nivekraz to computers & internet (4 comments total)

System Preferences -> File Sharing -> Shared Folders. Add the drive as a shared folder.
posted by nathan_teske at 7:58 AM on November 7, 2007

It worked in Tiger?

I've found the finder in Leopard to be somewhat flaky. Force quit the finder on the MacBook and try again. It should "just work."

I'm also old-school and like the mounted volumes on my desktop and set that in the preferences for Finder and have found that sometimes I can reach my Mac mini's FW drive from its icon on the desktop when it isn't showing up on under in the Shared section on the left pane of Finder.

I'm having issues where my USB drives attached to my AirPort base station will not show up -- of if they do, I can't see the contents, again, the mounted version on the desktop opens right up.

I hope Apple sends out an update to fix this. I really like the new Finder... when it is working.
posted by birdherder at 7:58 AM on November 7, 2007

It should just work, even without adding the drive as a shared folder.

My Mac Pro (running leopard) has a bunch of HD partitions and an external FW drive. When I connect to it from another Leopard machine I only see 2 shares (public folder's for the machine and main user). When I click the "Connect As" button in the finder I authenticate myself and can then choose ANY volume (internal partition or external FW) I like.

Not sure what your problem could be…
posted by schwa at 8:47 AM on November 7, 2007

This is my first time trying to reach the external drive. The drive is displayed in the "shared folder" of the sharing menu on the mini. It doesnt show up when I "connect as" an authorized user. Could it be related to the external drive being FAT32?
posted by nivekraz at 12:12 PM on November 7, 2007