I would like to connect to a external drive that is connected to my wireless printer.

[bobbywillmes]

Here is my setup:
Macbook
Epson Artisan 800, it is setup to print wirelessly from my Macbook
Western Digital 160GB external hard drive

My Macbook is out in my family room, the printer is in my bedroom. I would really like to able to connect my external drive to my printer(it has a USB port on it), and for it to connect wirelessly through the printer to my macbook.
I really feel I need to start using TimeMachine(or another backup application), but I really don't want to have my external drive connected to my MacBook all of the time for the automatic backups.
This may sound confusing, but it is possible?

 

[Gee]

I don't believe this is possible. It's most likely that the USB on the printer just functions as an input to control the printer directly. In order for it to make a drive available wirelessly over the network, the printer would need some basic Network-attached-storage functions, which it's unlikely to have.

If you do want to do wireless backups, you'll need something that's designed to do this, like a Timecapsule or an airport (which personally I think is a better solution because you can use any disk including RAID set-ups, and take the disks away easily to avoid having your backups burgled when you're on holiday). There are some other non-apple solutions too.

 

[RedTomato]

USB needs a client device on one end and a controller on the other end.

Printers and hard drives are client devices. Connecting two together wouldn't do anything. They'd just sit there dumbly. Controllers are things like laptops, PCs, Time Capsule, NAS devices etc.

Originally pretty much all USB cables had a client end (the squarish end) and a controller end (the flat end). Nowadays with the variety of different USB ports and cables it's less clear.

 

[milton.sheaf]

iPod has a USB interface too, did you think you could plug your iPod into your printer and play music on it? Or print out album covers LOL?

USB Printer is a target device. You need to attach it to a host controller (a computer). Attaching it to another target device (hard drive) is invalid.

 

[Sayer]

Here's a tip: If the USB port is square and not rectangle, you can't plug other devices into that port.

If it's a flat rectangle then it has some kind of hub functionality or even host functionality.