suggestions on how to connect iMac *directly* to Maxtor Shared Storage?

What ports do you have on your iMac and what ports does the Maxtor have? What model is the Maxtor and which iMac do you have?

Regards,
Steve M.

Hi TaBalie-

Do you have this all connected through a router?

This may help: Creating a small Ethernet network

Luck-

-DaddyPaycheck

With all those ports on the Mac and the Maxtor, you are all set to connect them via either Firewire or USB. Yes, those ports are for plugging in printers, memory sticks, etc., and they are most certainly also capable of connecting peripheral hard drives. Just ask the Apple guy at Best Buy to show you the correct cable. It is very easy to connect them directly.

Regards,
Steve M.

He said no firewire, and that he is trying to connect the hd to the mac directly. The only way to do this is over Ethernet. It seems silly though that they would make a network hard drive without the ability to connect it directly to a computer.

Message was edited by: cmendill

I guess it depends on the meaning of "directly." My Iomega HD is connectly "directly" to my iMac G4 by a Firewire cable. Or I could use USB. There really is no more "direct" way of doing this.

Regards,
Steve M.

Sorry that I didn't really understand your problem. I didn't realize that the Maxtor Shared Storage is a NAS (network-attached storage). I very briefly looked at the Maxtor site and found out that the device is designed to be used over a network and connects only via ethernet. According to what I read, the USB ports on the Maxtor are only for connecting a networked printer or connecting other storage devices. As you said the USB ports on the Maxtor look just like your ports on the Mac because the two devices are not designed to connect by that route. So there is no USB cable that can solve this problem.

As for connecting "directly" with ethernet, I found no information in my brief search, but I would suggest that you try a broader search of the internet.

Good luck,
Steve M.

Hi TaBalie-

Those ports on that drive would indeed be to add peripheral devices to the drive and not to access the drive directly.

You could conceivably make an ethernet network by connecting the Mac and the drive with an ethernet cable, but that is not what you want. It must be connected via FireWire or USB.

This may be helpful: Mac 101: Set Up Storage Devices

There are no Apple guys at Best Buy, only a guy that might know enough about Macs to get appointed so.

Luck-

-DaddyPaycheck

So I believe I've found a work-around for the Maxtor Shared Storage II. I was amazed that there wasn't a way to mount the drive without having to use Maxtor's EasyManage software.... So here's what I did...

Using Pathfinder I mounted the SSII with EasyManage. Once the drive was mounted I used the get info command to find out what the drive's URL was. The SSII uses a cifs:// url. I just typed in the url from the connect to server dialogue and presto there was my drive. Your PUBLIC url should looks something like this:

cifs://MSHOME%20@192.168.00.000(insert assigned ip address)/PUBLIC

The Url for your private folders should look like this:

cifs://MSHOME;"Account Name"@192.168.00.000(insert drive's assigned ip address)/"Account Name"

Just insert Account Name (without quotes) and you on your way!!!

Hope this helps....