Can I do this with an External HDD?

[yojimbothe3rd]

I'm looking at the My Book Essential edition hdd which has usb 2.0. My router is a D-Link Dir-655. So I would plug the hdd into the usb port. I'm wondering if I can access the hdd over the internet. It is my impression that if I were to plug it into one of the ethernet ports I could do this. The only My Book that would work like that is the World Edition, and that is a little too rich for my blood. Does it work the same way with the usb port? If not does anyone know of a fairly cheap hdd in the 250-350GB range with an ethernet port (gigabit maybe)?

Another question, with the hdd plugged into the usb port, can I share the hdd over my wireless network? I know with question would probably be easily answered reading the router manual but I thought I would ask while I'm here.

Thanks for everyone's help setting up my mac.

 

[mattscott306]

No, I don't believe you can access an external HD over the internet. Sorry mate.

 

[aristobrat]

I didn't see anywhere in the manual for the D-Link DIR-655 where you can use the USB port to share a USB drive.

The only reference to the USB port on the back was for using it with a USB flash drive to configure the router itself.

 

[yojimbothe3rd]

I didn't see anywhere in the manual for the D-Link DIR-655 where you can use the USB port to share a USB drive.

The only reference to the USB port on the back was for using it with a USB flash drive to configure the router itself.

Damn the USB port is pretty useless.

I guess what I was looking for is something that I could use when I'm out and about, when I'm at home and also something I could use to back up.

It seems like I'll need to get two externals. One as a backup especially something that will work with time machine and another as a portable hdd probably either 120 or 160 GB.

 

[netdog]

Can I do this using a hard drive attached to an Apple Extreme? I don't have a fixed IP.

A step-by-step guide would probably be helpful to many of us.

Thanks!

 

[eluk]

Can I do this using a hard drive attached to an Apple Extreme? I don't have a fixed IP.

A step-by-step guide would probably be helpful to many of us.

Thanks!

From Apple:
Instant drive sharing.

New to AirPort Extreme, AirPort Disk turns almost any external USB hard drive into a shared drive. Simply connect the drive to the USB port on the back of your AirPort Extreme and — voila — all the documents, videos, photos and other files on the drive instantly become available to anyone on the secure network, Mac and PC alike. It’s perfect for backups, collaborative projects and more.

A simple-to-use AirPort Disk Utility gives you more setup options. You could set the disk to become available whenever you connect to the network. You could set up password-protected accounts for everybody on the network, or allow read-only access to certain files and folders. The choice is yours.

 

[netdog]

Sorry, maybe I wasn't clear enough. I currently share my drives over the network with Apple Airdisk, but I am curious about how a non-fixed IP broadband network might be shared over the Internet. This is what I am hoping a clever person might do a step-by-step guide for.

Thanks!

 

[beatsme]

this can be done, but you'd need to assign the HD an IP address, which means you'd have to get a NAS box of some kind, and then set it up as a share. It should be pretty easy, since a NAS box is designed for that kind of thing.

link

basically what you'd wind up doing is logging on to your home network using the public IP address your ISP has assigned. If you go to this website, you can get your public IP address. Even if your ISP is using DHCP to hand out addresses, your address won't change that often, if at all, depending upon how the DHCP service is configured on the server side.

 

[macleod199]

Sorry, maybe I wasn't clear enough. I currently share my drives over the network with Apple Airdisk, but I am curious about how a non-fixed IP broadband network might be shared over the Internet. This is what I am hoping a clever person might do a step-by-step guide for.

Thanks!

I use http://www.dyndns.com/ to assign a domain name to my dynamic IP. It's free, and pretty effective. They have several programs you can install for various OSes to automatically update your IP with them every however many hours or days you select... I assume there's one for OS X.

I haven't got around to using this to share my AirDisk over the internet, yet. I can't imagine it being that hard to figure out, though.

 

[kolax]

Bonjour.