External Hard Drive

[TheJosh89]

Hi everyone, first post here...been reading for a while but need some help now.

I have been considering buying a NAS (cheap, something similar to the MyBook World / Live) for a little while now because I want to access media files primarily between 2 of the computers on my network. The dilemma I have is that I would also like to bring this hard drive with me when my family goes away on a vacation or to relatives or something. As such, the only way to access the files on the NAS is via a high speed internet connection or to have a router to plug it into, which leads me to want to have just a normal external hard drive. The question I have is since both machines that will primarily use the drive are actually on the same desk, can I splice the USB cable of a desktop external drive and then run one to each computer? The only reason I thought this would work is because the power being supplied to the drive would be constant as the desktop drives have a stand-alone AC power supply.

Any help you guys have would be much appreciated!!!

Thanks!!!

 

[skorpien]

Unfortunately you cannot connect a USB HDD to more than one computer at a time. You'll need either a USB switch and choose which computer can access it at any time, or a USB device server which in turn connects to your network.

Another option is to share this hard drive on one machine and connect to it via your home network from the other machine.

 

[TheJosh89]

Unfortunately you cannot connect a USB HDD to more than one computer at a time. You'll need either a USB switch and choose which computer can access it at any time, or a USB device server which in turn connects to your network.

Another option is to share this hard drive on one machine and connect to it via your home network from the other machine.

That's what I was afraid you were going to say. I think I might just go with the share setup and deal with a slight loss of speed. I'll connect the drive directly to my Windows XP Pro machine and share it so I can access from my MBP. And I'll just tell the machine to Wake for LAN access I guess?

Thank's a lot for the help and quick response!!!