Data Drive (F) not accesble on the home network

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I have a home network between a Win 7 64bit desktop and an XP Pro laptop. I am able using the Win 7 desktop to view and work with shared files on the XP. When I try to view the shared drive F (data) files from the XP laptop I get the error message the it is not available and that I might not have permission blah, blah blah. Other files/folders such as Desktop are OK.

Individual folders or files in that partition can be set for sharing and ARE accessible. Can’t I make the entire partition (drive F) accessible?

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Hi Phil,

If I understand correctly, your drive F is a partition on your Windows 7 computer? Is so, you can right click on the shared folder on F drive, select Properties, and select the Sharing tab, and confirm that you have the Everyone group set for full control permissions. Then click on the Security tab and confirm that you also have the Everyone group set up with full control permissions there as well.

If you are interested in mapping your F drive, check out this How To Geek tutorial for mapping drives to XP and to Windows 7. You have to check the sharing and security permissions.

If you want to share the entire drive F partition, you can do so, but you still have to set the two permission sets appropriately. A word of caution if you do that, because everyone will be able to access everything on your F drive. I personally only share folders.

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Thank you. That solves it.

My F Drive is data only and thus I don’t consider it a security risk to have that accessible over my home network.

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I do the Everyone full access share and security on my drives but once in a while I have problems with a portable USB-powered drive for some reason and have to create one master folder to share and keep everything in.

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If you have good network security from outside PC’s then sharing your PC’s with each other over your network should be very secure. I have 3 PC’s on my network and fully share between them. If I have files that I do not wish to share with everyone (I sometimes have my children or other family members visit and allow them to connect to my network from their laptops) I password protect these files individually (Quicken financial software, etc.) so that only my wife or I can view these files. For normal data, pictures, music, etc, I allow everyone to view them since they are family things anyway.

As Gerald states you can set up sharing for any folder you wish to share, or all folders on a PC. You do have to set up this sharing for each PC and each folder you wish to share, but you only have to do this once.

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