Help please! - Using SMB to connect to external drive?

Hi Christina, as far as I know SMB is used for network connections to Windows based volumes, for example smb://servername/share. I could be wrong but unless your external drive is on a network I think you have been give wrong advice.

USB or firewire are the usual interfaces for external drives.
Hope this helps.

Cheers.

Hi Christina,

Provided that your husband has enabled sharing on the said external drive, then you can follow these steps:

1. Open System Preferences-->Sharing, under the Services tab click the checkbox to the left of Windows Sharing


2. Still in System Preferences-->Sharing, click the Firewall tab,if your Firewall is enabled (Firewall On) click the checkbox to the left of Windows Sharing.


3. Reboot your Mac


4. Click the Finder icon on your Dock or just open an new finder window


5. Select Network on the sidebar of the finder window, the available shares should appear! (unless firewall is blocking them)





a few Macs running 9.x, a bunch of Macs running 10.4.x and some serious SGI workstations running Irix 6.5.x

Are you sure that's how I would connect using SMB?

The previous steps allow you to enable SMB on your Mac (Windows Sharing is just another name for SMB), and allow your husband's PC to connect to to your Mac as well


I can connect to the drive over the network from finder, but then have trouble copying files, so was told I needed to connect using SMB.

What kind of trouble? Copying starts and after a while seems "frozen"? Copying works only for small files? You cannot copy at all?

How do you connect from the Finder? Opening a Finder window, clicking on Network etc? From Finder's Go menu --> Connect to server?

If you use the latter, the syntax is: smb://IPAddress_OfPC/Sharename

Is your mac and your husband's PC on the same network (like your home) or on different network?

Is the PC running a firewall? If it does, make sure that the firewall is allowing you (your Mac's IP address) to access the PC.

You can also go through these articles from Apple:

http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?path=Mac/10.4/en/mh1163.html
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?path=Mac/10.4/en/mh1169.html
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?path=Mac/10.4/en/mh1161.html
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?path=Mac/10.4/en/mh1158.html






a few Macs running 9.x, a bunch of Macs running 10.4.x and some serious SGI workstations running Irix 6.5.x

Hi Christina,

When I copied from the Finder, I opened a Finder window, chose Network and then the name of the disk I wanted was right there, and I selected it and chose Connect. Then I ran the software and had the problem with all the files not copying.

Yes, that's an known issue with Tiger, network cache is acting up...Use Command-K or from the Finder Go-->Connect to Server.. untill Apple release a fix for this...

Then, I was advised to use the smb://IP-address method to connect and I did and it connected, but when I ran the back-up software, had the same result as before (only 2 GB copied). Which made me think it wasn't connected correctly, even though I thought I had done it right.

Truth is that SMB is not the most reliable way to connect...esp with Macs there are quite a few drwabacks (major one being the ridiculous slow speed), another user is experiencing slow transfers : http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=435642&tstart=0

Btw, when I connected a drive directly to my iMac and copied that way, all the files copied fine (using the same software). However, I would like to be able to use the other drive, connecting over the Network.

When attaching a HD directly to a computer things are pretty much plug + play (no networking involved) 😉

but I wonder if the trouble might be with the disk I am connecting to, rather than my method of connecting? (It's a Buffalo Linkstation 250.)

If this is the one you have: http://www.buffalotech.com/products/product-detail.php?productid=72, I see that it also features a built-in FTP server. Unless you have a specific reason to use Samba (SMB), you're better off using FTP to share the HD between your Mac and your husband's PC



some Macs running 9.x, some Macs running 10.4.x and some serious SGI workstations running Irix 6.5.x







Message was edited by: fu

"...you're better off using FTP to share the HD between your Mac and your husband's PC."
Is connecting through the Finder the way I would use ftp to connect to that drive? Or is there a different way I do that?

Yes, using the Finder, it's the same way: ftp://IP_Address/...
FTP is quite flexible though, you can also connect through a web browser or a stand-alone FTP application, like Transmit ( http://www.panic.com/transmit/), Interarchy ( http://www.interarchy.com/) or Cyberduck which is a free OpenSource App ( http://cyberduck.ch/). FTP will give you decent speed: Interarchy promises HD speed (and I can confirm that on my network), Transimit is the most popular (and almost as speedy as Interarchy) and Cyberduck is also good + free 🙂

Can you think of another reason I would be having this trouble, other than the way in which I'm connecting to the drive? Could it be a problem with the drive? (There IS space on it, so that's not it.)

Since you can connect to the drive just fine and you're also able to start transfering files back and forth, it's quite unlikely that networking issues are causing the problem.

I've been evaluating SMB solutions about 2 months ago on my network, I wasn't satisfied with the results (I was experiencing the classic, "freezing", smb was eating up ridiculous amounts of system/network resources etc) so I dropped it.

I don't personally use the Linkstation or any kind of that HDs so I can't comment on your drive's quality or idiosyncrasies (I'm working with professional film editing/retouching equipment, and the HDs we use are like 10 times more expensive than our computers). Also, space is rarely an issue (unless you try to copy files larger than the disk's available space).

The catch, when dealing with HDs (and this is a tricky one since it's not advertised) is that "read" speed and "write" speed are two completely different games. Add the network option when dealing with network/shared HDs and you've got an extra overhead ("transfer speed" + HD's "read"/"write" speed). Choosing a protocol that gives you the best performance/reliability rate is crucial.

In your case (just like most cases where hybrid (like PC/Mac) networks are involved) FTP is one of the best ways. It's platform-agnostic (you can ftp from any computer running any OS) and it's mature enough to give you decent transfer speeds.





some Macs running 9.x, some Macs running 10.4.x and some serious SGI workstations running Irix 6.5.x

Hi Christina,

Okay, this is a stupid question, but exactly how DO I
make use of ftp://IP-Address/ ?

I used Command K and entered the IP address when
connecting in the past, but that doesn't allow me to
access through ftp, does it?

So I'm in the Finder and I . . . ?

Consult the Linkstation HD Manual and make sure to enable FTP access on the HD 😉

I guess this is done through the web-based interface of your drive (?)

O.K., I'll figure it out. Thanks very much for your help.

Feel free to let us know how it's going or start a new discussion about FTP access 🙂



some Macs running 9.x, some Macs running 10.4.x and some serious SGI workstations running Irix 6.5.x

I've just been having the same problems. Could not get connected to the Linkstation via PC or Mac. However after reading this thread i enabled the FTP part of the Linkstation and tried it via FTP. The Mac could read the files, but not write, but i then checked in the Network part in Finder and the Linkstation was showing up. So as if by magic i had access and not via FTP. Although if i want to use it with my PC i have to use it via FTP, i'm confused to how i got it working, so i can't offer any help, but at least you know that it should work with your Mac.

MacBook Pro 2Ghz Mac OS X (10.4.6)