Member Avatar for grgreen

I have a PC and a Mac both hooked up wirelessly through an Airport Extreme router. Internet works fine. File sharing works fine between the two. I hooked up an external hard drive to the router that I wanted to share between the two computers. That worked but here's the problem...

If I move files into the drive from my PC on the admin account I can see them on the Mac and vice versa. But if I put anything into the drive from the PC user account, I can't see it from the other two. The file is on the drive, but I can only see it from the user account. Also, whatever I put on the drive from the admin account or Mac, I can't see from the User account
Anybody have any clue how to fix this?

Thanks for the help!

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  • Latest Post Latest Post by DimaYasny

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This looks like the classic case of two different network connections/targets (or a NAS that gives each login its own folder) rather than a single shared root. ’s symptom (two letters mapped and different visibility) and ’s comment about share permissions point to either: (a) the PC admin and the user are connected to different UNC paths on the router/NAS, or (b) the device is handing out per-user “home” folders so each account sees only its own files.

Quick checks to run from each Windows account (compare results):

net use
net view \\<router-ip-or-name>

If you see different remote names for Z: and Y:, delete the wrong mappings and clear cached credentials, then remap to the single share you want everyone to use:

net use Z: /delete
net use Y: /delete
net use Z: \\<router-ip>\<share-name> /user:<shared-user> <password> /persistent:yes
cmdkey /list
cmdkey /delete:<target-to-remove>

Practical fixes

  • Log into the router/NAS admin and inspect disk-sharing settings: look for public vs. per-user/home-folder options and per-user permissions. Either enable a single shared folder for everyone or create one shared service account with Read/Write for all clients.
  • Remove duplicate mappings on the Windows user, clear stored credentials in Credential Manager, then remap drives using the same UNC path and credentials on all machines.
  • From the Mac, mount the same share via smb://<ip>/<share> and authenticate with the same account to confirm cross-platform visibility.

Caution: back up important data before changing share settings or reformatting. If these steps don’t resolve it, note the exact UNC paths shown by net use on each account and check the NAS/router manual for “home directory” or per-user-share behavior.

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Member Avatar for grgreen

Ok..so I figured it out, but I am really confused. When I log into the user account, it somehow shows up with TWO network drives a z: and a y:. I've only set up one shared drive and I called it z:. But the y: drive is the one that works from the user account.

Utterly frusturated.

Member Avatar for DimaYasny

the drive, I suppose, is a SOHO NAS server. how exactly do you access that drive? if it's over the network, and it works with windows, I presume it uses some kind of Samba server. If it's config can be edited, all you need to do is edit the share's properties for a default permissions upon creating files and directories.

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