sharing/switching usb hard drive not networked

i have been trying this for a week now, with no success and i'm getting frustrated.
my goal is to share a usb drive between 4 computers using a usb switch. i have 3 computers runnig ati all in wonder video cards recording various programs and am using the other computer to create dvd movies.
i got it to work and was happy. i push the usb switch and then use disc management to reactivate the drive. it only takes a few clicks and does exactly what i want but then it won't reactivate?
i think it has something to do with the boot sector? it runs fine till i turn off the computer with the drive atached? i think that is what does it? the last time i tried to reactivate the drive it tried to activate other drives that are not on the computer. they are on another computer. i switch it over to that computer and it still fails?
what am i doing wrong?
the drive is formated with two partitions. the first one is a back up of my windows primary and the other is storage. it is a dynamic drive partition and i am using xp service pack 2. it is a deskstar 200 gb uata 100.
i want to avoid networking the drive because
1: i dont want to have a server on all of the time just to access my data
2: i don't want to keep my network band with free for other things
3: i don't want to slow other computers by runnig data through them
4: transfering data using usb is 3x faster than my network speed.

any help would be great and if you can help me retreive data off of the failed drive. PLEASE help, i have lost the last few days of the winter olimpics and don't have a back up.

For the hassle factor - id reccomend going with a standard networking setup.

You may need to "stop" the usb drive before shutting off your PC though. I don think this will affect the others