Accessing external drive without PC on

cliffsave

I have Toshiba external hard drive with all my music and photos on which plugs into my PC via USB. I also have a wireless network (BT HomeHub) and a laptop.

Is it possible to access the files on the external drive from the laptop via the wireless network (the drive is next to the HomeHub).

I tried plugging the USB cable from the drive straight into the hub and not only did it not work but it mucked up my laptop's wireless connection (now sorted).

Is it simple/ cheap to connect the drive to the hub and make it wirelessly accessible to the laptop, please?

Many Tx for any suggestions/ education

macman

No, you either need to have the PC on to access it via USB, or you need to buy a drive which has an ethernet port which can be plugged into a router and accessed via the network.

cliffsave

Thanks macman

Leopard

macman wrote: »

No, you either need to have the PC on to access it via USB, or you need to buy a drive which has an ethernet port which can be plugged into a router and accessed via the network.

Sorry, macman: please take no offence but the advice you have posted here is incorrect: it will mislead the OP (and others).

It is possible to network a USB hard drive wirelessly by connecting it directly to a BT Home Hub - even BT admits it - but, in practice, the end result is not wonderful because of the technical limitations of the Home Hub.

I've not got a Home Hub myself but I researched this last year for a Windows-afflicted neighbour who has, and who sought my help in sorting out his.

The Home Hub (well, the one that BT sent my neighbour, anyway) will only address through USB an external hard drive that's been formatted in FAT32. So, file sizes have to be restricted to less than 4 GB. More crucially, the Home Hub's USB port is USB1, not USB2, which makes data transfers through it chronically slow. It does actually work, though. Here is how to set it up. That also contains a link to Swissknife which is needed to overcome the FAT32 partition-size limit of 32 GB on the hard drive which is imposed by XP.

For Mac users with a Home Hub, much more flexibility and speed is obtained by connecting an Airport Extreme to the Home Hub with an Ethernet lead and then plugging the USB2 external hard drive into that, to network it. The Airport Extreme works natively with external hard drives formatted in Apple's "HFS+" format, so no conflicts nor system restrictions arise.

Even that configuration, however, will be limited by the 100 Mb/sec speed of the Home Hub's "Fast" Ethernet ports; so, it's then best to let the Airport Extreme create an additional 802.11n wireless network of its own at 5 GHz and use that for wireless file transfers - leaving the Home Hub to function as its modem.

pitkin2020

or you could simply plug in the laptop..................

Leopard

pitkin2020 wrote: »

or you could simply plug in the laptop..................

It's conceivably possible that the OP had worked that out. :T

The OP's question sought to establish how to access wirelessly the data on the external USB hard drive from a remote location with a laptop - not how to transport a laptop from a remote location to a position sufficiently adjacent to the external hard drive to be able to connect the two devices by means of a USB lead. :rolleyes:

cliffsave

Thanks Leopard, I will try what you suggest, however I will need to reformat the external drive to FAT32 but suspect the USB 1 speed means I won't be able to stream music (at a speed that I can enjoy it).

Thanks again

Taffybiker

Taken from the faq at http://www.music.umich.edu/qtss/faq.html

I have a 56K modem and my QuickTime connection speed settings are right but the audio still won't stream. What's wrong?
Check the actual speed of the network connection your modem is making... a 56K modem may get a connection of anything from 30K - 50K depending on a variety of factors. If your connection speed is not at least 38Kbps, you will not be able to reliably listen to the streamed music.



USB 1=1.5Mbps, USB 1.1=12Mbps, USB 2=480Mbps


As you can see, you should have little trouble streaming music even with USB 1.

cliffsave

I have backed up the external drive (a Western Digital 500 Mb) and downloaded and run SwissKnife but it (SN) crashes every time I select the drive from within that program. Is it too big a drive for SwissKnife to handle?
Should I be asking them?
Tx for any help

nomoneytoday

Maybe something like adaptor would allow connection to a router?


http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/USB-2-0-Storage-to-NAS-Dongle-BT-Download_W0QQitemZ280365425931QQcmdZViewItemQQptZUK_Collectables_HardDriveEnclosures_RL?hash=item414714e50b&_trksid=p3286.c0.m14

cliffsave

Thanks for the link to the USB to NAS dongle but it too is FAT32 and my drive is NTFS (and I can't work out how to reformat it to FAT32).

The External drive was really a back-up so I've decided to buy a new NAS enabled external drive which I hope I can download my music and photos to and access from whichever computer I want via my wireless network.

Thanks for your help guys.