Instant Access / Switchable Access Levels to Private Shares

WD Legacy Products My Book Live
1

Hi Everybody,

I recently purchased a My Book Live (2TB) and clearly - I’m already enjoying the benefits of a network storage. But there are also major drawbacks, I could not find how to work around yet. (For the actual question scroll down to the last sentence, all others might find deeper understanding or even some ‘how to’ on the lines in between :wink:)

I want to have

  • pseudo-public shares, everybody within my network can read from, but only authorized users can modify (e.g. audio tracks)
  • private shares, only authorized users can read + modify (e.g. family pictures)

When I log on to my media-PC (running win7)  I want to

  • have instant full access to the pseudo-public folders

  • have no access to the private shares

  • be able to log on to the private shares as authorized user, being still able to access the pseudo-private ones

The way I tried to realize this, is the following:

  • Create folder PseudoPublic
  • Create folder Private
  • Create UserA allowed to Read+Write PseudoPublic
  • Create UserB allowed to Read+Write PseudoPublic+Private
    For the “instant access” issue,  I named UserA like my Win7 log in, giving the Win Account a password (which it didn’t have) and then using the ‘control userpasswords2’ in the run dialog box, disabling the “user have to enter password to log on”-box. This way I can use PseudoPublic-shares quite like internal hard-drives. Guests, however, can not corrupt my precious audio-collection. Even when using my log on at the media-PC, they can’t stumble upon private data.

Till here, everything works out great :smiley:

But then… the drawbacks:
If I decide to access private data fom the Win7-media-PC, I of course have to enter my UserB name and password. This results in being connected to the private share via WebDAV, where it takes tens of seconds (!)  to open folders and seconds to open ~1MB pics - which is completely inacceptable (no showing holiday snaps :confounded:) The speed is sometimes down to 25KB/s…

If I therefore disable WebDAV (run dialog box, enter ‘services.msc’, search WebDAV, disable, restart Win7) I cannot be connected to the Private folder.
It’s the same reason for both, I guess: there is only one connection (UserA) per server (samba server on the WD my book) allowed :angry:

I could reset my network connections via the command prompt + ‘net use * /delete’ to re-log on afterwards, but I’d loose the mounted drives.

So my question is: Is there any  way to basically have this ‘switchable dual-level access’ from a win7 device, I want to have?

Cheers + Thanx for reading
   Martin

2

FIrst, you can’t have “Pseudo-public” shares.

Without detailed manual editing of the Samba configuration via SSH, public shares are ALWAYS Read/Write.

Your workaround to that is, well, a workaround…  and could be easily defeated at the client-side.

Second, Microsoft (not just Windows 7) will not allow you to use the same network resource with two different usernames.

But it WILL let you do it if it THINKS it’s two different resouces.

UserA can log into the NAS by NAS-NAME

\NASNAME\sharename1

User B can log into the NAS by IP ADDRESS

\ip address of NASNAME\sharename2

1 Like
3

Hey Tony,

thanks a lot for the tip using the IP. … Don’t know what to say (about the blockade as well as the backdoor, Microsoft accidently(?) leaves open). So I guess using my router for establishing virtual servers, I could have [an] arbitrary [number of]  Users logging into the NAS? Well, just a mind game - everything works out just fine now! :slight_smile: Kudos!

Concerning the “pseudo-public” share: What I meant was a private folder, that is read-accesable to everybody, thus “pseudo-public” (so yes, it’s actually pseudo-private). This was safe, as long as I don’t expect some professional to intentionally hack me, right? I mean, this is the idea of heaving private shares…?

Cheers

4

Hi,

what you want, if I understood it right, is good idea, and it is nothing that could be impossible, I have seen it on other NASes.
Unfortunately, it is not possible on WD NAS.

5

Hi Schwan,

which of the two could be possible? The multi-user login from one device using fake, forwarding servers or the sharing options? The later one definitely works :wink: The first I didn’t try yet - don’t know if I will.

6

Well, I meant those sharing options. :wink:

It is not possible to create one folder with RO Public and RW private access on WD NAS. And It is a shame, because I dont think It is hard to implement it. :cry: