External hard drive locked out?

[HexDSL]

Hello all.

Im running Windows 7 X64 (Home Premium) on my desktop PC. plugged into this pretty much all the time is my 350GB WD Essentials USB drive. this is where i store any family videos, pictures of drivers for my PC. all was great until...

I went on holiday so i put my external drive in my netbook bag (windows 7 x32 running on it) when i tried to use the drive with my net book i got all sorts of popups about taking ownership of the directory. after some messing i got the files i wanted.

when i got home the drive was fine on m ydesktop. then when i wanted to take some home movies over to my dad (windows vista laptop) i was told that i was not allowed to take the files off the drive unless i took ownership.... another hours fiddling...

why does my desktop pc 'own' my drive and how do i make it more friendly to other PC's without formatting it?

please help its really irritating me

 

[logicearth]

Use "Everyone" when setting permissions. Or other standard Windows groups, like User or Administrators.