Help networking an external hard drive

[Nino Valenti]

I have 3 PC in my house and my laptop has the pics, tunes and other important stuff. When My kids wanna look at pics or listen to music I have to give up my laptop.

I would also like to be able to go on to any computer and use Thunderbird and be able to access my mail from the external hard drive...

Doing a quick Google search, I've found this, Addonics NAS Adapter
Invalid Link Removed

Sound good and exactly what I am looking for but sometimes these things are too good to be true.

All my computers are connected wirelessly to my wireless router.

ANy help/suggestions will be greatly appreciated.

 

[Tarrbot]

Personally, I don't know about the USB-CAT5 adapters. I don't trust them personally since they rely on USB... which relies on processor cycles on the connected device.

Secondly, I also wouldn't personally do any file transfers of any size over wireless. You'll saturate your the bandwidth.

Wireless is nice for convenience but not for heavy duty, real world transfers.

With that said, I've shot T1s 50+ miles using wireless tech but that's way outside the scope (and price range) of your intent.

 

[Horny Toad]

Might be more complicated/expensive than what you're thinking of doing, but I use a ReadyNAS Duo and it rocks.

http://www.netgear.com/Products/Storage/ReadyNASDuo.aspx

 

[Yvon]

I had the same problem,
I bought a new router (apple airport extreme)
I have a 1T hard drive plugged on it in USB. I can access it from anywhere in the house, I could even make it available from anywhere in the world through the net. But it take a lot more tweaking.

Other router might also work for cheaper

 

[BassyBill]

Just make sure all your computers are in the same workgroup and you should be able to share folders that contain music and pics on any of them (right click the folders you want to share and set this on the relevant Properties tab). The external hard drive will be hosted on the PC it's connected to, but all others in your network should be able to access it if you wish.

Email to a client like Thunderbird (or any other) is best just dealt with on a single computer imo, otherwise you can get in a bit of a muddle with what is downloaded where and what is left on the server. But if your kids are sharing the files you want to share on their machines, then you should pretty much always have access to your main PC to get your email, I think - right?

You probably don't need to buy any additional hardware to do this, as long as the PC directly connected to your external hard drive is on when you want other computers to get at it.

EDIT Forgot to say "see you in a few weeks".

 

[MJ5150]

Just make sure all your computers are in the same workgroup and you should be able to share folders that contain music and pics on any of them (right click the folders you want to share and set this on the relevant Properties tab). The external hard drive will be hosted on the PC it's connected to, but all others in your network should be able to access it if you wish.

Email to a client like Thunderbird (or any other) is best just dealt with on a single computer imo, otherwsie you can get in a bit of a muddle with what is downloaded where and what is left on the server. But if your kids are sharing the files you want to share on their machines, then you should pretty much always have access to your main PC to get your email, I think - right?

You probably don't need to buy any additonal hardware to do this, as long as the PC directly connected to your external hard drive is on when you want other computers to get at it.

This is what I was going to suggest. Now I don't have to do all the typing. Thanks!

The downfall here is if the device the external drive is connected to gets turned off, access to the external drive will be lost.

-Mike

 

[BassyBill]

You and your typing aversion! How do you manage to do your job?

Good to hear from you Mike. If you can get to NYC for the 2nd August, first beer's on me.

 

[Nino Valenti]

Just make sure all your computers are in the same workgroup and you should be able to share folders that contain music and pics on any of them (right click the folders you want to share and set this on the relevant Properties tab). The external hard drive will be hosted on the PC it's connected to, but all others in your network should be able to access it if you wish.

I've done this before and I think this is the best bet for my situation

Email to a client like Thunderbird (or any other) is best just dealt with on a single computer imo, otherwise you can get in a bit of a muddle with what is downloaded where and what is left on the server. But if your kids are sharing the files you want to share on their machines, then you should pretty much always have access to your main PC to get your email, I think - right?

I was planning to have everything downloaded to the Ext. HD so that wouldn't of been an issue.

EDIT Forgot to say "see you in a few weeks".

Thanks for the advice. See you soon.