[X-Newbies] Restricting Access to Data on External HD

[Tony Johansen]

On 9/7/2005 9:48 AM, "John Kiss" <john.kiss at comcast.net> wrote:
> I also have an external hard drive connected to my computer. Some
> time ago I set permissions so that other users (wife, grandkids) on
> my computer have no access to the external drive. When they log on,
> the external drive does not show up for them. When I switch to my
> account, the drive is there.
> 
> Here are my settings for the drive:
> Owner: john
> Access: Read & Write
> 
> Group: john
> Access: Read & Write
> 
> Others: No Access
> 
> Ignore ownership on this volume is not checked.

Thank you, John.

A good night reading a couple of chapters of David Pogue, delving into Mac
Help, experimenting (including accidentally denying myself access to Systems
Prefs for awhile) Has given me a good understanding for partially solving
the problem.

Now one external drive appears on all other accounts, but with a red
negative spot (clicking produces a no access dialogue box) (and is
accessible to me). The other external drive is still accessible to everyone
but its 'ownership' pane is simpler and I expect that's because it is still
on factory formatting (which is Fat 32. I expect ownership and permissions
to change when I reformat to OS X extended.)

Problem is I can deny it to all accounts except mine, or allow all accounts
access.
But I have more than one account each one an "administrator' but with
different names (one for book-keeping, one for graphics, one for music)

I can't yet figure how to make a 'group' to include all of my admin accounts
but nobody else's (wife and 5 kids) I fear that might require 'root' which
is a scary place I have never been.

Suggestions for creating a group, or putting all my accounts into an
existing group?

Tony.