# Share USB drive to networked macs



## Frontier (Aug 20, 2007)

Hi I have a Lacie external USB drive on my mac (OS10.4) and would like to share this drive with others on the network. At present it is formatted in FAT 32 but that could be changed if necessary. Any comments will be appreciated.
Thanks.


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## Headrush (Feb 9, 2005)

I assume there are both Mac and PC users on the network?

I would grab the free (donations asked) program Sharepoints @ http://www.hornware.com/sharepoints/

Using that its as simple as selecting folders you want to share.
(not restricted to Public folder)


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## Frontier (Aug 20, 2007)

Thanks for that. It should solve the problem. There are PCs on the network but they do not have to access the shared drive. Do you think it would be better formatted in the mac format?
Thanks again.


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## Headrush (Feb 9, 2005)

Frontier said:


> Do you think it would be better formatted in the mac format?
> Thanks again.


If it will never need to be used with a PC, I would used the HFS+ journaled format.

If you plan to store and DVD length files/videos, don't use FAT32. (It is limited to 4GB file size) FAT32 also suffers from fragmentation.

You can check out the differences and limitations to both at wikipedia.org


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## Frontier (Aug 20, 2007)

Many thanks for your help. I will reformat the drive.


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## Frontier (Aug 20, 2007)

Sorry to be so naive - but how do I use a .gz file? It does not decompress with either stuffit 8 or the built in zip sw.


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## Headrush (Feb 9, 2005)

Frontier said:


> Sorry to be so naive - but how do I use a .gz file? It does not decompress with either stuffit 8 or the built in zip sw.


Using the Terminal App you can do:

```
gunzip filename
```


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