Wireless HD server?

[milesdavis]

Hello,

I'm trying to figure out the best way to be able to access a bunch of USB drives wirelessly while I'm home.

I've looked into the AEBS, but it's too expensive, and I've read that it has some issues.

What I have : linksys router, old pc laptop <----

Can i somehow use these two things and create some sort of network that my mac can access?

the PC does not show up in Finder wirelessly -- but I haven't connected it directly to the ethernet on the router....

I'm a bit confused. I know people do this, just not sure how to proceed.

Thanks!!

- MD

 

[misterredman]

Take a look at FreeNAS:

www.freenas.org

You could install it on your old PC and share your USB drive through the network. It works perfectly with macs and pcs. It's free.

 

[milesdavis]

Thanks for the reply! I will check it out --

Do you use this? Any recommendations? I basically have a windows laptop that I can essentially do whatever with.

Thank you! MD

 

[misterredman]

Best thing is to give it try by downloading the liveCD to test your hardware. 😀

 

[milesdavis]

Okay, hit a snag. I realized that while I wanted to use a existing windows XP computer to serve files + print, all my external drives are formated HFS+ not fat32 or even NTFS!

There is no way this is going to work, right?

Also -- are there any other alternatives to Time Capsule that are cheaper?

awesome, thank you for the responses!

-md