File sharing with external HD

I have been trying to maintain file sharing on external hard drives. When the drives (USB) are are properly removed before shutdown or powered down after shutdown and not powered up before restarting, file sharing is lost.
This is on Windows XP Pro.
When the drives are not powered down or removed, they seem to maintain file sharing.
Is this a normal thing? Is their a workaround?

George

 

XP Pro will often save its configuration on close and try to keep the same configuration on restart. Also USB configuration is created on the fly. Therefore, I am not surprised that if you unplug the USB before shutdown, the system doesn't automatically realise these are the same drives on next use and set up the share. On restart, the system will remember the settings as long as the drives are still there.

I'd recommend you look at external hard drives with built in network connections if you want to share storage space over the network. Devices like a Buffalo Linkstation do the job pretty well if you are on a tight budget. And you can use your external USB drives for automated back up of one of these devices. You'll get a much simpler and more reliable solution.

 

re: ReggieB rreply

Thanks for your quick and very helpful reply, ReggieB.

You mentioned some things that I wasn't aware of. As a result, I took some time to investigate and discovered that:

1. If you enable file sharing and shut down Windows without removing or powering off the external hard drives, Windows does indeed save the settings.
If you start or restart the computer with the external hard drives connected and powered on, file sharing is enabled.

2. If the computer is started with the external drives powered off or disconnected (physically), file sharing is not enabled.

3. Any time you start the computer with the external hard drives on and connected, after file sharing was initially enabled, file sharing is again enabled even though you may have started a number of times prior with them off and/or disconnected.

This seems to have solved my problem. I wanted to use the 3 external hard drives I already have instead of a device like Buffalo Linkstation.

The downside of all this is the startup time is increased; almost doubled when the drives are on and slightly shorter when they are off.

Thanks again for the assistance. Consider this solved.

George