[dpruett]

I have an iMac with OS 10.4 and a Windows Xp machine on my home network. The iMac has an external hard drive. How do I get to the files on the external hard drive since it is not in the directory structure of any user on the iMac that I can log on to from the XP machine?

[retcynm]

If you're comfortable editing config files, then you can add the external firewire drive as a new share in your /etc/smb.conf file.
If you can first make sure that both computers are in the same workgroup, things will go easier. I'd say to first check on the XP machine ( R click on My Computer>>Properties>>Computer Name ), and see which workgroup it is set to. Most of the time the default is MSHOME. Then, on the Mac, go to Applications>>Utilities and start Directory Access. If the padlock is closed, click it and enter your user name and password. Double-click on SMB/CIFS, and enter the workgroup name from the PC. I tend to always enter the workgroup name in all caps (SMB is only supposed to see it as caps, but I've seen macs get confused if I enter the name in lowercase).Click OK, and then click the padlock.
Next, it's time to back-up the current smb.conf file. In a Terminal window, enter...

code:
 sudo cp /etc/smb.conf /etc/smb.conf.orig 

---

Enter your password, and hit return.
The smb.conf file has a basic format of
[sharename]
option = value
option = value
So, assuming that the name of the firewire drive that you want to share is "FirewireDrive", "joe" is the short name of the user account that can log onto the Mac, and "Mac-External" is the name you want to give the share, you'll add the following to the end of your /etc/smb.conf file....
[Mac-external]
path = /Volumes/FirewireDrive
valid users = joe
writable = yes
Adjust these to your situation. After editing and saving the smb.conf file, go to the sharing pane of System Preferences and restart Windows Filesharing.
Now it's time to go to the PC. If the networking dieties are smiling on you, the Mac will show right up when you go to My Network Places and click on "View workgroup computers". Double-click on the icon for the mac, and then double-click on the share you just set up. Enter the user name and password from the Mac, and you should be set.

[janingo]

My friend has a Windows XP machine and a firewire harddrive. We have been transferring files between his windows machine to my mac by first putting it on the firewire drive. The disc is NTFS.
Yesterday we connected the mac to the drive while the windows machine was still connected (mac uses 6 pin and windows machine 4 pin). The mac took over the drive and i could transfer a few GB. The windows machine however froze and required a restart.
Now the windows machine keeps on freezing when opening explorer while the firewire disc is connected. The mac is not connected anymore.
How do you get the windows machine to forget that there was a harddrive there before?