I have a 60 gb external drive in a USB enclosure. I set it up for sharing with the hope that multiple users can access it (it is connected to the main computer which is always on). The problem is that every time I power down the drive and re-start it resets itself (default setting?) to not being shared. Is there a way to change this? David

No because that's the way it is with external USB HDs. You need to set the sharing options every time the hard drive is turned on. i_XpUser

How can that be? The hard drive on any laptop or desktops gets turned off and on and you don't have to reset the share option on those.

Some external hard drive enclosures have both networking capability and a USB or firewire connection e.g. both a RJ45 port and a USB port. I think the way it works is if that type of enclosure is connected via a network cable to e.g. a router RJ45 port and that router is also connected to other computers, it is treated the same as any network drive and the sharing settings won't go away when the computer the external hard drive is connected to has been re-booted. If you don't have that type of external hard drive enclosure, a search of the web reveals there are many relatively cheap programs that may be able to help your situation. e.g. "....give specific removable drives full access to any computer." USB Admin Pro - $10 per computer - trial version works for 30 days or 30 executions, whichever comes first. "Restrict all unwanted removable media. At the same time as allowing the drives you specify." http://www.sonarware.com/usbadminpr... There may be some way you can do the same thing for free, but I have no idea what the procedure is.

"How can that be? The hard drive on any laptop or desktops gets turned off and on and you don't have to reset the share option on those." Those are internal drives, and considered permanent. A USB or firewire connected drive is considered as a removable drive - the default rules are different.

The following link should be enough to give you ideas of what Tubesandwires is talking about. http://www.pcworld.com/article/id,1... i_XpUser