Yet another stupid chick who can't access her external hard drive

I've searched for this topic, I'm sure it's out there, but I can't find what I need specifically, so I'm cluttering up the board with yet another how do I get the ****able PC to share an external hard drive with the wonderous mac?

I have an external hard drive. It's not a time capsule, it's an iomega, there was a super sale and I got it very cheap so I didn't do any research before I bought it.

I have a wireless router.

I have a windows desktop.

I have a Macbook Pro.

I even have a stupid dongle that I'm beginning to think was not necessary and that the sales guy at the computer store saw me coming a mile away, I really must stop buying technical stuff when I'm wearing red pumps and lipstick.

I have hooked the hard drive up to the router with the dongle. Although, the problem is exactly the same whether I use the dongle or not.

The desktop (windows) cannot see the hard drive.

The MBP cannot see the hard drive.

If I plug the hard drive directly into either machine, I can download, access, change, save, backup whatever from either machine. I can get photos and music downloaded from either machine to play/show on either machine.

What in the name of all that's holy am I doing wrong? I can access the internet through the router from either machine, why can't I get at the hard drive.

Neither the hard drive nor the dongle came with any useful instructions.

I can make puff pastry dammit, from scratch, why can't I get this to work?!

Is it time to lace up my Docs and make a second trip to the computer store?!

What is the model number for the Router? What is the dongle?

I have hooked up iomega usb hard drives to apple routers with no problems seeing them from either windows or mac. My guess is there is some setup in the router you need to do.

The router is a d-link WBR-2310

The dongle is a GXT multi-port NAS dongle.

I'm sure you're right about the router being the problem, I just can't figure out how to solve it.

If the drive is connected to the router, you'll need to access it via the "Go to server" command in the Finder - it won't show up automatically like a drive you plug in directly.

Usually it goes like this:
Finder > Go > Connect to server > type in smb://192.168.1.x.

The "x" is your harddrive's address in the network that is has been given by your router. If you log into your router's configuration webpage you should be able to find out that address.

(If you're not sure how to access your router's configuration webpage, open System Preferences > Network > Airport > Advanced > TCP/IP and check the "router" field. Copy that address into your browser and you should be able to get to the config webpage).

After a cursory look - the d-link doesn't have a USB NAS port so you do need the GXT NAS dongle. Unfortunately I cannot find any documentation on the dongle. The dongle probably gets a different IP Address than your router. You could look at your router and see if you can figure out the ip address of the dongle. As Aptmunich said you'll probably have to use the ip address to get to the GXT NAS.

And sadly have never got a USB dongle to work with a Mac - they just will not co-operate.

Aptmunich said:

If the drive is connected to the router, you'll need to access it via the "Go to server" command in the Finder - it won't show up automatically like a drive you plug in directly.

Usually it goes like this:
Finder > Go > Connect to server > type in smb://192.168.1.x.

The "x" is your harddrive's address in the network that is has been given by your router. If you log into your router's configuration webpage you should be able to find out that address.

(If you're not sure how to access your router's configuration webpage, open System Preferences > Network > Airport > Advanced > TCP/IP and check the "router" field. Copy that address into your browser and you should be able to get to the config webpage).

Click to expand...

IvanLasston said:

After a cursory look - the d-link doesn't have a USB NAS port so you do need the GXT NAS dongle. Unfortunately I cannot find any documentation on the dongle. The dongle probably gets a different IP Address than your router. You could look at your router and see if you can figure out the ip address of the dongle. As Aptmunich said you'll probably have to use the ip address to get to the GXT NAS.

Click to expand...

I'll give this a whirl. Thanks for the advice.

harryb2448 said:

And sadly have never got a USB dongle to work with a Mac - they just will not co-operate.

Click to expand...

That kind of reporting is not encouraging. Stupid dongle.