Category: tech tips

If you have a mixed environment of PC’s – MS Windows and Macintosh, it can be tough to configure access to shared resources on shared machines.
Sure you might think OSX can do this with the ‘Windows File Sharing’ but you are limited to the ‘home’ folder.
Sharing a Windows folder or drive is actually fairly simple and straight forward.
Here is a great tutorial from Lifehacker on how to mount Windows shared folders in OSX:

http://lifehacker.com/software/mac-os-x/how-to-mount-a-windows-shared-folder-on-your-mac-247148.php

But what about sharing other (like external drives) resources on you Mac with other Macs and PC’s
By that I mean what happens if one of your Mac’s used for Graphic Arts or Pre Press has external drives that need to be shared to other Mac’s and PC’s
I have found VERY few articles that describe this easily and succinctly in over a decade of working with Mac’s.
So here is what has worked for me.:
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You can share any volumes on the Mac, USB, Firewire and other internal drives etc.

First TURN OFF WINDOWS FILE SHARING in the System Preferences.
I find the first example works best for me most of the time.
Then Go to Applications

Then Utilities and find the Terminal application and open it.

Open Terminal and type;

cd /etc

sudo pico smb.conf

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You’ll be prompted for the password.

Then scroll down to the end of the options and add something like this below:

[BIG EXTERNAL]

comment = BIG EXTERNAL

path = /Volumes/BIG EXTERNAL/

browsable = yes

public = yes

read only = no

Or maybe like this:

[USB]

comment = USB Drive

path = /Volumes/USB Drive name

valid users = joe user

public = no

writable = yes

printable = no

When done making your changes, hit Control-O to write changes to disk (save additions to smb.conf file) and press Return when prompted for a file name. The hit Control-X to quit pico and close the Terminal window.

Now go to your Window PCs and try and ‘browse’ the network and find your shares.
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To share additional folders, duplicate the section above — but change the name, comment, and path for each new folder.
I have used this and veriations of this technique for years with great success.
Hope this helps you get productive.

Ok now what if you need to mount an NTFS volume ‘in’ OS X?
There are a few solutions.
This one is condensed from tips from MacOSXHints:

Snow Leopard has the ability to mount NTFS volumes as read/write, but it’s not enabled by default — just read only is supported, as in 10.5. Here’s how to get full read/write support for NTFS drives in Snow Leopard.
First, uninstall NTFS-3G or Paragon if you’re using either one!

Here’s how to get read/write support for NTFS drives in Snow Leopard:

1. In Terminal, type diskutil info /Volumes/volume_name, where volume_name is the name of the NTFS volume. From the output, copy the Volume UUID value to the clipboard.

2. Back up /etc/fstab if you have it; it shouldn’t be there in a default install.

3. Type sudo nano /etc/fstab.

4. In the editor, type UUID=, then paste the UUID number you copied from the clipboard. Type a Space, then type none ntfs rw. The final line should look like this: UUID=123-456-789 none ntfs rw, where 123-456-789 is the UUID you copied in the first step.

5. Repeat the above steps for any other NTFS drives/partitions you have.

6. Save the file and quit nano (Control-X, Y, Enter), then restart your system.

After rebooting, NTFS partitions should natively have read and write support.
This works with both 32- and 64-bit kernels. Support is quite good and fast, and it even recognizes file attributes such as hidden files.
[There may be good reasons why Apple left support disabled, so use at your own risk!]

Another solution that may be simpler is to use this utility which ‘puts’ a GUI onto the above style tweak.

Anyhow I hope this helps