Wirelessly share a harddrive

[davidwes]

Hi. I was looking to see if there was anything cheaper then the Apple Base Station to wirelessly share a harddrive and printer.

My house has a verizon wireless router already but with two laptops around we do not want to be stuck at a desk when we need to use data on an external harddrive.

 

[MacPossum]

As far as the printer sharing goes you can use the cheaper AirPort Express Base Station ($99 as compared to $179), but I'm not sure about a hard drive.

 

[davidwes]

As far as the printer sharing goes you can use the cheaper AirPort Express Base Station ($99 as compared to $179), but I'm not sure about a hard drive.

Yeah. I had gone into an apple store to ask about using the express instead. Then they told me that they didn't sell anything that could share a harddrive the salesmen said "would that be cool technology, having a harddrive and being able to share it on your network, maybe one day" I kid you not.

I also asked him about the new screens on the macbook pro's because I was curious that in the system profile they are still called lcd and I thought they would have said led. He told me there was no new screen technology in the macbook pro's. He said he never heard of Led either.

 

[MacPossum]

Yeah. I had gone into an apple store to ask about using the express instead. Then they told me that they didn't sell anything that could share a harddrive the salesmen said "would that be cool technology, having a harddrive and being able to share it on your network, maybe one day" I kid you not.

I also asked him about the new screens on the macbook pro's because I was curious that in the system profile they are still called lcd and I thought they would have said led. He told me there was no new screen technology in the macbook pro's. He said he never heard of Led either.

So you got one of those people. I haven't seen any of them in an Apple Store for quite some time. Anyways, I would just call up Apple and ask them over the phone or you could use the "Chat Now" option on Apple's store. Those people are usually pretty knowledgeable about this type of thing

 

[Objectivist-C]

I also asked him about the new screens on the macbook pro's because I was curious that in the system profile they are still called lcd and I thought they would have said led.

If you still haven't found the answer, the screens are still LCDs. The only thing that changed is the nature of the backlight (CCFL to LED).

 

[zioxide]

Hi. I was looking to see if there was anything cheaper then the Apple Base Station to wirelessly share a harddrive and printer.

My house has a verizon wireless router already but with two laptops around we do not want to be stuck at a desk when we need to use data on an external harddrive.

NAS and a print server. However, this will probably put you in the price range of an airport extreme. Print servers are like 80 bucks iirc plus the cost of the NAS if you already have a regular hard drive.

 

[ab2650]

So you got one of those people. I haven't seen any of them in an Apple Store for quite some time. Anyways, I would just call up Apple and ask them over the phone or you could use the "Chat Now" option on Apple's store. Those people are usually pretty knowledgeable about this type of thing

Heh. Reminds me when I took my sister-in-law to get a case for her MacBook. The kind, but somewhat young, salesman asked if he could be any help, so I said we were interested in a case for a MacBook.

Apple Store Employee: "Sure, we have lots of cases. What size is the MacBook?"

Me: "... Uh...."

Normally I think the Apple Store Employees are pretty darn good, as far is who I normally encounter in a mall.

 

[mkrishnan]

NAS and a print server. However, this will probably put you in the price range of an airport extreme. Print servers are like 80 bucks iirc plus the cost of the NAS if you already have a regular hard drive.

True... plus the AEBS has the great advantage of being able to serve a Mac format HFS+ disk, whereas you will usually not get all the bells and whistles on most other NASes. This may be important on Leopard; so far, Apple has said, as far as I know, that the external drive for Time Machine has to be HFS. So there are few options for NAS that will work for Time Machine besides the AEBS.

 

[davidwes]

Heh. Reminds me when I took my sister-in-law to get a case for her MacBook. The kind, but somewhat young, salesman asked if he could be any help, so I said we were interested in a case for a MacBook.

Apple Store Employee: "Sure, we have lots of cases. What size is the MacBook?"

Me: "... Uh...."

Normally I think the Apple Store Employees are pretty darn good, as far is who I normally encounter in a mall.

I have to say it was very exciting knowing more then the salesperson (and by the way this is the 5th avenue nyc store) but I was disappointed because I really did need the help.

Do people here use the Apple Base Station as the secondary wireless network, ie not having the connection go straight to it. The reason I was looking for something cheap is because we already have wireless, free from verzion and it works great, just can't share the harddrive which I think will be very important with Time Machine

 

[daze]

I have to say it was very exciting knowing more then the salesperson (and by the way this is the 5th avenue nyc store) but I was disappointed because I really did need the help.

Do people here use the Apple Base Station as the secondary wireless network, ie not having the connection go straight to it. The reason I was looking for something cheap is because we already have wireless, free from verzion and it works great, just can't share the harddrive which I think will be very important with Time Machine

I use my Airport Extreme Base Station as an add on to my network to provide N only wireless. I also really like the hard drive mounting capability. Highly recommend it.

On the routing side, the WRT54GL is an excellent piece of hardware with options to use many great firmwares on it, such as Tomato, DD-WRT, etc. One reason I use it is to keep tabs on bandwidth and QoS for VoIP.

 

[Ladybug]

I recently purchased one of these Simpleshare
for storage and so far I'm happy with it.

I use it mainly for storing my collection of TV movies, and music. The movies stream over wireless with only a slight pause at the beginning while the movie loads, about a 15 sec pause. Not a bad trade off for being able to store them all off of the computer itself.

Sharing a printer and another hard drive is possible with the two USB ports on the back of the device, however I haven't tested those options yet, not sure my old hp printer would even work. Plus with 500gb of space I don't really have a need for a second external just yet. Anyway just thought I'd throw this out there as another option for you to look at.

 

[davidwes]

I recently purchased one of these Simpleshare
for storage and so far I'm happy with it.

That looks interesting! I didn't realize they made stuff like that. Do you have two people using the harddrive at once?