USB Network Drive

[tombarnes]

I have recently bought a USB hard disk to back up the data on my imac. I am going to be moving house soon, and I will be buying a mac mini.

I would like to make the USB hard drive availible to all computers which join the network (e.g. mate's laptops, my 2 computers etc.) without having to turn on the computer the hard drive is connected to.

In other words, I want to make this hard drive a network drive, which is standalone, and is seen by all computers on the network automatically on startup.

Does anyone know how I can do this.

I guess it would be in a similar way to a printer sharing access point like this

Many thanks,

Tom

 

[matticus008]

You can't just plug a USB hard drive into a network. Unlike printers, which simply need to be provided with data about what to print, hard drives must be controlled by a host device (usually a computer, though NAS boxes can also perform this role).

Moral of the story: if you want to have a shared network drive, physically connect it to a computer that is turned on all the time. Setting up a NAS isn't cheap for home users, and that USB drive is basically useless in that situation anyway--a standard internal drive is all you need to populate a Network-Attached Storage enclosure.

 

[CanadaRAM]

You can get an empty NAS Ethernet-drive enclosure for about $100 - $120 and transplant your hard drive mechanism into it. All of the data on the mechanism will be lost when you reformat it using the NAS drive's OS.

Linksys, If I remember, has a NAS device you attach the USB drive to externally - that is, it has no internal space for a drive.

 

[matticus008]

Linksys, If I remember, has a NAS device you attach the USB drive to externally - that is, it has no internal space for a drive.

You're right, they do have one of those! I'd completely forgotten about it--something about a storage link in the name?