How do make a drive attached to one computer accessible by another?

I have USB3 drives attached to MBP running Monterey. I want to make one of them available to another computer running Monterey. The drives show up over a network connection but they are not accessible.

MacBook Pro 14″, macOS 12.5

Posted on Aug 20, 2022 12:05 PM

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Posted on Aug 21, 2022 08:43 AM

I was able to solve this with a fix of another problem. In Security Preferences you have to add /usr/sbin/smbd to Full Disk Access. This allows connected computers to see all the stuff Monterey protects such as attached drives and User Desktop Documents and Downloads.

11 replies

Aug 20, 2022 02:25 PM in response to rbpeirce

Do you have File Sharing and Remote Login enabled in the Sysstem/Sharing preference pane?


If your router has connections to allow you to connect the EHD to it you can access it from both computers if they are connected to the same WiFi LAN.


Another method I've uses is to have a user account on the hosting Mac that the other Mac can log into remotely and thus access the EHD connected to the hosting Mac. This might work for your particular situation.


Aug 20, 2022 02:37 PM in response to Old Toad

Another method I've uses is to have a user account on the hosting Mac that the other Mac can log into remotely and thus access the EHD connected to the hosting Mac. This might work for your particular situation.


I this is the method I've been trying to use. The computer shows up on the network. I click connect and log in. I can see the drive but it appears as a blue file folder. I can't get inside it.

Aug 20, 2022 03:08 PM in response to Old Toad

They are APFS.


As an experiment I moved a drive from the Monterrey machine to the Mavericks machine. It worked fine there, but on the Monterey machine it just shows up a a blue file folder.


A possibly related problem is my own home directory shows up as a blue folder if I access my MBP from another computer try to access anything else first.


This never happened on Mavericks and I wonder if there is a bug in Monterey.

Aug 20, 2022 03:22 PM in response to rbpeirce

When you connect to the host, are you using a login that exists on that Mac, or some other method.

If you log in with an account that is on the host, you should have all the access that user has.

You would need to use the Sharing System Preferences (File Sharing) to give the user you are using to connect the access you want them to have.


File Sharing in Finder will initially try to log in with the credentials of the user account. If the account on the client Mac has the same credentials on the host Mac, but not access to the drive, then you would need to provide the desired access in File Sharing. Or, after it connects, click Connect As… and enter the necessary credentials.

Aug 20, 2022 03:29 PM in response to Barney-15E

I use the identical approach to connect to Mavericks or to Monterey.


Go to Locations or network as required and click the machine.

Click connect and login as a user on that machine.

On Mavericks I can then see everything.

On Monterey, the best I can see is my login directory. Everything else shows as a blue file folder. Sometimes my login directory also shows a a blue file folder. In that case disconnecting and reconnecting sometimes solves the problem.


This is definitely Monterey related in some way but I can't figure it out.

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How do make a drive attached to one computer accessible by another?

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