Setting up an External Hard Drive as a Network Drive?

[Cook_1]

Anyone know how to do this?

I thought it was as simple as plugging it into the server and right clicking on the drive itself, going to properties then sharing and enable sharing on it. But that's not it. Noticed that it's coming up as a local drive and the other drives on the network are network drives. So what step did I miss here?

[Cook_1]

I'm sitting on a machine that's connected to the local network.

I can go in and find the external hard drive, but other's in the office might not be able to find it unless they put 30+ minutes into finding it.

When I open up My Computer I see the other three network drives, but to find the external hard drive I have to go...

My Computer -> My Network Places -> Entire Network -> Microsoft Windows Network -> "Network Name" -> Server -> External Hard Drive

Where as to pull and put data onto the other three network drives all I have to do is go to...

My Computer -> Network Drive

So you can see where some people who aren't all that computer savey could take a long while to get to the external.

[Snatha1061]

you have to go in to my computer and hit map network drive.....then choose a letter....and point it to the drive location.

[Rootstonian]

Yep, have them map it and make sure check box for "Reconnect at Login" is checked (assuming this network drive is on 24x7).

A script can also be created like "net map \\servername\drivename z:\" No accountability for the accuracy of that script; just an example (it would be in a startup bat or cmd file).