Firewire HDD with sharing takes ages to start
 

I have a new Maxtor One Touch 300gb plugged into my firewire port. Some of the folders are shared.

When I reboot my PC, it takes 5 mins+ to get back into Windows, which doesn't happen when I unplug the drive; but if I do this, then I loose my shared folder and have to re-enable it which takes 5 mins+ as it has to set permissions for each folder, subfolder and file (50Gb worth).

When the drive is plugged in, then during the reboot, I would guess that Winows XP has to set-up the shared folder each reboot by setting the permissions for each folder, subfolder etc, each time. Hence the 5 minute wait.

This does seem absurd. Am I doing something stupid, or is there a workaround?

Ian Tresman
Derby UK