Single Wireless Storage for both iMac and Win 7

[yashman]

Hi,

I have a Windows 7 Laptop and an iMac. My primary station is Win 7 laptop but after buying the iMac a week ago, I need all my files to be available at a central location and be accessible on both.

So far I have been accessing the files of the Win Laptop using Home Sharing through iMac but in this case I have to run both the machines and Win7 machine stands idle until I am working, waste of resources and money

Can anyone suggest me any External Wireless HDD which works both on iMac and Win 7 without any hassle of formatting etc. with minimal setup like plug, play and forget.

Appreciate your help

 

[RedCroissant]

Hi,

I have a Windows 7 Laptop and an iMac. My primary station is Win 7 laptop but after buying the iMac a week ago, I need all my files to be available at a central location and be accessible on both.

So far I have been accessing the files of the Win Laptop using Home Sharing through iMac but in this case I have to run both the machines and Win7 machine stands idle until I am working, waste of resources and money

Can anyone suggest me any External Wireless HDD which works both on iMac and Win 7 without any hassle of formatting etc. with minimal setup like plug, play and forget.

Appreciate your help

I love Western Digital drives and have owned 6 of them with not one of them failing. I would recommend a WD Live external that you should be able to get at any electronics retailer.

What kind of router do you have?

 

[blueroom]

On the cheap & simple but little else a router that supports USB storage would work. Else a NAS like Synology makes is a great option.

 

[yashman]

I love Western Digital drives and have owned 6 of them with not one of them failing. I would recommend a WD Live external that you should be able to get at any electronics retailer.

What kind of router do you have?

Thanks for your reply. I am using Cisco DPC3925 Wireless Integrated router http://www.starhub.com/content/broadband/device/cablereadywirelesshomegateway.html

So with the WD i hope will what i hv need.

 

[Destroysall]

If external HDDs failing is a concern, then you could go with a regular hard drive and purchase an external disclosure for it, making it practically an "external drive".

 

[yashman]

If external HDDs failing is a concern, then you could go with a regular hard drive and purchase an external disclosure for it, making it practically an "external drive".

Thanks but my post is not related to failure of external HDD.

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I love Western Digital drives and have owned 6 of them with not one of them failing. I would recommend a WD Live external that you should be able to get at any electronics retailer.

What kind of router do you have?

Hi RedCroissant, I searched for WD Live and found out that there are many issues for the NAS external drives on the connectivity, loosing connection etc...does not work properly with Win 7 PC etc..

Do you have any experience of the Apple's Time Capsule. Appreciate your help.

 

[Destroysall]

Thanks but my post is not related to failure of external HDD.

My apologies for not being clear, but I meant it as an alternative though.

 

[RedCroissant]

Thanks but my post is not related to failure of external HDD.

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Hi RedCroissant, I searched for WD Live and found out that there are many issues for the NAS external drives on the connectivity, loosing connection etc...does not work properly with Win 7 PC etc..

Do you have any experience of the Apple's Time Capsule. Appreciate your help.

Well if the WD Live seems unreliable to you, I would go with a regular external with an ethernet connection. Best Buy has some good deals and so does newegg.com. What you could also do is get a large enough drive and partition it for the respective OSs as to avoid formatting/compatibility problems.

I have no experience with the time capsule since it has always seemed overpriced to me. I have heard some reports of them failing more frequently than other drives, but I cannot confirm that.

I always recommend Western Digital drives though because of my experience and also their customer service. I have had 5 external WD drives over the course of 7 years( 2x 250GB drives, 500GB USB, 2 x 1TB firewire) and also my and my wife's iMacs have WD hard drives in them as well. So I guess 7 is the more accurate number.

 

[yashman]

Well if the WD Live seems unreliable to you, I would go with a regular external with an ethernet connection. Best Buy has some good deals and so does newegg.com. What you could also do is get a large enough drive and partition it for the respective OSs as to avoid formatting/compatibility problems.

I have no experience with the time capsule since it has always seemed overpriced to me. I have heard some reports of them failing more frequently than other drives, but I cannot confirm that.

I always recommend Western Digital drives though because of my experience and also their customer service. I have had 5 external WD drives over the course of 7 years( 2x 250GB drives, 500GB USB, 2 x 1TB firewire) and also my and my wife's iMacs have WD hard drives in them as well. So I guess 7 is the more accurate number.

I have purchased the WD My Book Live 2 TB NAS but I am having tough time in getting it discovered on both the machines. I can access the devise using the browser but it cannot be found while doing the setup.

 

[RedCroissant]

I have purchased the WD My Book Live 2 TB NAS but I am having tough time in getting it discovered on both the machines. I can access the devise using the browser but it cannot be found while doing the setup.

This might seem like a dumb question, but did you run the installation cd/dvd on both machines? Have you allowed network storage using the browser setup?

You can also follow this link to the WD download page to download the most recent drivers if necessary. I did check though and the drive uses the drivers included in both OS X and Windows.