Sidebar Sidebar
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

How to wirelessly connect a hard drive?

E

edwardthefifth

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Aug 11, 2004
25
0
So here's what I'm trying to do:

I have an airport express hooked up to my cable modem
The airport express sits on top of my stereo, so I have the express connected to the stereo

I have an ibook that is wirelessly hooked up to the airport
So I'm able to stream my mp3s in itunes from the ibook to the stereo via airport

My problem is that I have far too many mp3s to keep on my ibook, so I have many files stored on an external lacie harddrive.

When I connect the harddrive to the ibook via the usb cable, I can obviously play all of the songs on the harddrive through my stereo via the ibook itunes/airport option. My problem is that I don't want my ibook to have to be physically tied down to the harddrive. Does anyone know of an easy way to wirelessly connect the hard drive to the ibook so that I can play the mp3s on the hardrive through itunes?

I've thought about just buying a mac mini with airport and hooking it up to the harddrive, but surely there has to a cheaper solution.

Many thanks in advance to anyone who is able to help.
 
I'd suggest setting up a used or refurb Mac Mini as your main music server, to stream through your laptop.

There is however, some way to setup ethernet hard drives, which could then, theoretically, be wirelessly routed to the lappy... i just know nothing about how to do this or the hardware involved.
 
I think you're out of luck there - you need to plug your LaCie into something which (a) has a USB or Firewire connection, and (b) has 802.11 wireless capabilities.

And, no, you can't just plug it into the USB port on the AirPort Express.

The cheapest combo I could come up with quickly is a reconditioned (US$189) 250GB LaCie ethernet drive connected to a $60 Linksys WRT54G (or some such), which you then connect wirelessly to the AirPort.

But that's pretty contrived....
 
Wireless HD

New Belkin wireless USB hub, will be available soon. Connected to computer with a USB dongle which transmits to the hub. The HD is then connected to the hub with a USB cable. I saw this on Engadget. You can also connect your printer, etc to the hub.
 
edwardthefifth said:
Does anyone know of an easy way to wirelessly connect the hard drive to the ibook so that I can play the mp3s on the hardrive through itunes?

I've thought about just buying a mac mini with airport and hooking it up to the harddrive, but surely there has to a cheaper solution.
Click to expand...

What you are asking for is effectively a NAS (Network Attached Storage). They exist and are commonly used for very large storage needs.

However, linksys has a Network Storage Link device that effectively adapts a USB drive to be accessible over ethernet. The product number is NSLU2. You could also replace your current external hard drive for a network hard drive. Something like the LaCie Ethernet Disk mini.

The benefit of going with a cheap mac mini is that you can then set it up so that the mac mini does the song playback removing the playback load from your ibook. In fact, making it so that you do not have to have the ibook turned on to play music. A Mac Mini together with an ATI Remote Wonder remote control means that you can control music playback without needing to touch a computer or even have a display connected to the mini.
 
I wonder about the iTV. Did it have USB or Firewire ports on it? I mean, Jobs has to know that buying GB-sized movies off iTunes fills up HD's pretty quick. What's the point of buying an iTV if you can only watch 40 gigs of media due to space limitations?
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.
Top Bottom
Back