External to Desktop to Laptop

[Kin2InuYasha]

My external hard drive is connected to my desktop computer, and I make a shared folder in my external and I can get to it through my my laptop via My Network Places, but when I shut down the external hard drive and start it back up, the folder shows up as empty. Any way to fix this, or any other methods?

Any help is appreciated. :)

[bassman]

Hello Kin2
How much time are you giving the laptop to look in the folder to be able to see anything? Sometimes it can take a while for 1 node to see all available resources on another. I move my laptop back and forth between two networks and it can take several minutes to show everything sometimes.
Do you actually see the shared folder but when you open it is empty?
When this occurs, can you see everything correctly on the desktop?
It sounds as if this has happened several times at least. What have you done to correct it so far?