External Drive driving me crazy! Access problem

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okay, this is really driving me nuts and before I go through the hassle of trying a "One to One" session, I thought I'd try here. Here's the set up:

2 iMacs (both intels, both running 10.6.5, current iTunes, current everything).
Airport Extreme Base Station (AEBS), forget the model but the dual band (not dual simultaneous band, but both g and n capable, set to "n").
USB/Firewire 1Tb hard drive (WD Studio model) connected via USB to the AEBS (I'll call this ED for "external drive").

On the ED, I have the family's common iTunes music, library, etc. iTunes is set to that location by default, with the "organize library" function enabled. iPhoto library is also here. I also have all the basic document files each user uses with Word pointed to those directories by default. The goal is that all music, photos, and documents reside on the ED to be accessible regardless of which iMac a user is on.

On the AEBS, I've set the ED for file sharing. I've used both the “With a disk password,” and “With base station password” and get the same problem described below.

For each user on each iMac, I've put the ED as a login item so it *should* mount when a user logs in.

Here's the rub -- most of the time when a user logs in, the ED shows up with a red "minus (-)" sign on it and when opened says the volume is locked. When I first installed the ED, I direct connected it to a iMac, formatted using Mac/Journaled, said "ignore ownership," and just to be safe said "Everyone" has read/write permission.

But when I plug the ED into the AEBS, it shows "Everyone" as having to No Access. I can change that to Read/Write, but it doesn't stay that way. I unplugged the ED from the AEBS this past weekend and direct connected to the iMac to try to correct permission, and it showed "everyone" as having Read/Write!! It's like it "forgets" the settings once I plug it into the AEBS.

The result is that for a user to have access, they have to "eject" the locked drive, then re-connect manually through Finder. PITA, and wife and kids are not pleased.

On paper, as far as I can tell, my set up should work, the drive should automatically mount for each user, and every user should have access. Would that it were so!

Thoughts anyone????
 
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I have this setup with a TC and it works for me. I believe I have it set to allow access with a base station password - then have that password remembered in the keychain of the individual machines. I have a second hard drive connected to the TC through USB - this was an old TC disk - but I have no permission problems with that disk either.

What I would suggest - is to copy everything off the drive - then format the drive with hfs+ and keep it blank. Then connect it to the AEBS - then copy the data over the network. That is how I have done it to have no problems. I think permissions change - as you saw when you plug into the AEBS.
 
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Daddy Elmis
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I give that some thought -- I hate to move 350g of data back and forth over the network connection. that'll take days.
 
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I moved 650G in a few hours - but everything was gigabit ethernet. I had to move my Timecapsule backup.
 

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