Mapped Network HDD Saving Strange

[DJ Corus]

I've recently began going back to school, and I wanted to make sure I could access my homework anywhere in the house. So I setup a little 40GB external HDD as a mapped Network drive thru the USB port on my router. In theory I figured it would very nicely saving things from my desktop and access it from my laptop and vise versa. But just yesterday I was using Microsoft Word writing an essay on my desktop that is hardlined. I finished up for the night and saved it to the mapped drive. Today I tried to access that word doc from my laptop, the file is missing and there are 4 .tmp files. At first I paniced realizing I didn't back up my file, but then I checked my deaktop and I can see the file right there in my mapped drive. So for some reason my deaktop can see/access it but my laptop only sees tmp files. Can anyone help?

Thanks in advance for any help you can provide!

 

[Alabalcho]

Are you sure you're checking same folder / share on that external drive?

Plug that drive into your desktop. Can you still see the file?

 

[DJ Corus]

I am definitely checking the same drive and folder.

I was hesitant on unplugging it from the router, thinking the files may get messed up or corrupt depending what state they are in. Maybe I'm over thinking it.