External drive not appearing in Windows Explorer

[bogorman]

Hi,
Although I am completely new to Macs, have installed Parallels on a MacBook Pro and everything seems to work fine. Have also installed Windows XP Pro.
One thing, however, puzzles me. On my pc when I connect an external hard drive to a usb port it appears in Windows Explorer. On the mac, however, although the drive appears on the mac desktop, when I switch to the Parallels desktop and open Windows Explorer the drive does not appear there.
Why is that?
Regards
Brian

 

[John@Parallels]

1. Make sure drive is formatted as NTFS or Fat32
2. Use Shared Folders as described in Parallels Desktop for Mac user guide from http://www.parallels.com/en/download/file/doc/Parallels_Desktop_for_Mac_User_Guide.pdf on page 207

 

[seanhoytphoto]

All drives must be NTFS or FAT32? As it is, Windows Explorer currently lists my HFS+ formatted Lacie drive (FW800) yet none of the other 3 other internal drives (all also HFS+) with the "Share Mac OSX folders with Windows" checked. I can map to them via the "User-defined Mac OS X folders" area, but my PC programs that use files by reference are very unhappy when the drive letter changes after an XP reboot. Basically, it breaks the books I design that pull in photographs by reference.

 

[bogorman]

Hi folks,
Sorry for the delay in replying. Thanks very much for your help.
Brian