A hard drive and a wireless router
 

Apologies, I'm not much of a technical wizard and although I've done some googling, I need some advice.

Simply, I'd like to be able to plug a hard drive into a wireless router and use it across the various computers on our home network. Most are Macs - doesn't really matter if the PC's not included but be a plus if it were.

I'm planning to either buy a router or get one free signing up to Virgin or Orange or whoever, so that's not such problem (although presumably some routers may not have the port - anything I should know?), but I've already got a hard drive - an Iomega UltraMax Desktop Hard Drive.

Question: Will this work?

Thanks.

Re: A hard drive and a wireless router
 

you will need either a NAS box with storage or a NAS enclosure that you can fit a drive into

Re: A hard drive and a wireless router
 

Correct me if I'm wrong, but does that mean that I have to take my hard drive apart, extract the drive itself and put it into a different casing?

Re: A hard drive and a wireless router
 

yes if you want to use them . It will be easy honest

Re: A hard drive and a wireless router
 

Or just buy a NAS with a drive already in it. What sort of budget do you have?

Re: A hard drive and a wireless router
 

Don't really want to buy a new drive, just bought the iomega, couple of months ago, then thought it might be useful to network it. What about this, does this do what I want?

http://www.amazon.co.uk/NEWLink-Sing...505680&sr=1-18

Re: A hard drive and a wireless router
 

it does but it will be slow. Do you just have a single drive in the box? if so you can get an enclosure for around the same price of the dongle

Re: A hard drive and a wireless router
 

and you're sure I can do it myself :)

Re: A hard drive and a wireless router
 

well as long as the drive enclosure you have is simple enough to get into. It should just be a matter of unscrewing the drive putting it into the new enclosure and cabling it up and connect to router and then use the software.

It will be worth making sure you know what drive you have in the box now as it will need to match ie sata/ide

Re: A hard drive and a wireless router
 

This is the sort of thing:
http://www.ebuyer.com/product/126893

That one is built to take a SATA drive so you'd need to check the drive type in the Iomega. As has been said already a direct enclosure like this will be faster and a lot more reliable than the dongle.

Re: A hard drive and a wireless router
 

How do I find out whether it's a SATA drive? Nothing in the specs I can find or on the drive itself says SATA, so either it's not, or I'm looking in the wrong place.

Re: A hard drive and a wireless router
 

have a look at the case and see how easy it is to open up then describe it to us

Re: A hard drive and a wireless router
 

Just checked the iomega site, it says eSATA.

Re: A hard drive and a wireless router
 

can you link us to the actual device?
Are any of the machines alway on?
esata will be a sata drive then so the link Dai posted will work

is it this one? http://go.iomega.com/en-us/products/.../?partner=4760 looks like it should be easy to get into

Re: A hard drive and a wireless router
 

Nope, my mistake, judging by the price (because Iomega aren't giving anything away on the casing) I've got the non-eSATA one. (Either that or one hell of a bargain!)

Re: A hard drive and a wireless router
 

have a look at the case see how it opens

Re: A hard drive and a wireless router
 

(http://www.amazon.co.uk/Iomega-Ultra...559311&sr=1-11)

---------- Post added at 12:54 ---------- Previous post was at 12:52 ----------

four philips screws on the bottom, it seems.

Re: A hard drive and a wireless router
 

there you go then simples unplug it all and have a look inside. The new enclosure will pretty much go together the same way as this comes apart

Re: A hard drive and a wireless router
 

so if it's not sata is it ide?

Re: A hard drive and a wireless router
 

It will be one or the other. It should be simple to tell. If the data cable plugged into the back of the drive is 80 wires wide it's IDE. If it's a skinny cable about 1cm wide it's SATA.

Re: A hard drive and a wireless router
 

Do I have to count them? ;)

Re: A hard drive and a wireless router
 

LOL, if you run out of fingers it's IDE...

Re: A hard drive and a wireless router
 

Ok, slightly baffled, only 79...

No, seriously, it's a red cable, flat but not actually thin (if that makes sense - it's not thin like a ribbon cable), about 7.5 mm wide. Given the price (I paid about £90 for it) I would have expected it not to be SATA - so am I looking at 80 wires all bundled in together?

Re: A hard drive and a wireless router
 

sounds like a sata cable to me :) I take it there is a power connection too a wider plug but similar to the smaller cable

Re: A hard drive and a wireless router
 

What about a combined NAS / Router - such as this - plug the USB drive into the router and let the router share the disk on the network.

Re: A hard drive and a wireless router
 

You have 79 fingers?!!

Seriously, sounds like SATA to me as well.

http://www.cooldrives.com/18seatsaiiul.html

Re: A hard drive and a wireless router
 

Yup, that's the one. I won't wonder how I seem to have bought a SATA drive for the price of a non-SATA drive...

---------- Post added at 15:00 ---------- Previous post was at 14:59 ----------

Wow, sounds perfect - and I can plug in a printer, too. So what's the catch?

Re: A hard drive and a wireless router
 

It seems to have some mixed reviews but there are other makes out there. But it is designed to fit a niche market which you want to make use of!

Re: A hard drive and a wireless router
 

But USB is a crap way of sharing a drive.

Re: A hard drive and a wireless router
 

Ah, no firewire... But there must be firewire versions, no?

Re: A hard drive and a wireless router
 

Look at the end of the day your best solution to share a drive across the network is by using NAS. The second best option of sharing the drive would be I spose firewire from a server computer that is on most of the time if you have one. The absolute worst way would be to buy a new router and network share a drive over USB. You now have the facts its your choice

Re: A hard drive and a wireless router
 

I think I'll probably go the NAS way, but the idea of sharing a printer too sounded good. Thanks for all your advice.

Re: A hard drive and a wireless router
 

How big is the HDD you are using?

http://www.chinavasion.com/product_i...d-bit-torrent/

nas box with print server

---------- Post added at 10:03 ---------- Previous post was at 10:00 ----------

http://www.lindy.co.uk/dual-hdd-nas-...ata/32479.html

more expensive but takes 2 drives with a print server

---------- Post added at 10:04 ---------- Previous post was at 10:03 ----------

http://www.uk-surplus.com/icy-box-du.../prod_239.html

more expensive again but very well featured

---------- Post added at 10:13 ---------- Previous post was at 10:04 ----------

http://www.amazon.co.uk/NEWLink-Driv...895585&sr=1-45

this one looks the same as one of the above but a much better price