Best way to connect external hard drive for my set up?

Money_Maker_Shaker

Inspired by a few threads on this board I'm taking the plunge and are buying a large external usb hard drive (probably one of the Seagate Freeagent ones) and some backup software - probably Acronis True Image.

I'd like to use the hard drive both to back up the files on my desktop pc and laptop but also as an occassional portable spare memory space for my laptop as I've filled it up and my Paint Shop Pro files are huge. I don't imagine using it like this often, but occassionally when can't access my wireless network it would come in really handy.

As I've got a Netgear DG834N Wireless N Modem Router how am I best to attach the external hard drive? Directly to the desktop (as this is the pc I'd be backing up most often) & then move it to the laptop to do occassional backups? Or directly to the Router - is this even possible?

I look forward to hearing suggestions.

Best wishes

MMS

Whitefiver

The straightforward external hard drives connect using USB (or firewire), and hence need to be connected to a PC. You can get things like a Linksys NSLU2 network storage link, which the hard drive plugs into and which connects to your router. You then have Network Attached Storage.

I have one of these, and it works fine - but is not particularly fast. However, all PCs on the network can use it.

There are more sophisticated stand alone devices too, but outside of my knowledge.

Hope that helps,

Regards,

White.

Conor_3

DO NOT USE NETWORK ATTACHED STORAGE (NAS/NDAS) OVER WIFI.

It's horrendously slow and you get a lot of dropped connection warnings.

addicted

There is no need to connect it to the router. Just connect the external HDD to the USB port. It provides high speed data transfer.

TheFaqqer

You could connect the external drive to the desktop PC, and then share the drive on your network.

Map the drive from your laptop, and then when the desktop PC is on, you will be able to access it from your laptop too. Rather than trying NAS drive (which I've done before and was VERY unimpressed), this is what I have at home - a shared network drive on my desktop machine so that all my computers on the network can access it.

Money_Maker_Shaker

TheFaqqer wrote: »

You could connect the external drive to the desktop PC, and then share the drive on your network.

Map the drive from your laptop, and then when the desktop PC is on, you will be able to access it from your laptop too. Rather than trying NAS drive (which I've done before and was VERY unimpressed), this is what I have at home - a shared network drive on my desktop machine so that all my computers on the network can access it.

Bingo, that sounds like the sort of solution I was looking for.

Thank you to everyone for the advice :T :T :T

Best wishes

MMS