A hard drive and a wireless router

ngazidja · 05-08-2009, 22:38

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.

05-08-2009, 22:39

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

ngazidja · 05-08-2009, 22:51

Quote:

Originally Posted by zing

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

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?

05-08-2009, 23:01

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

Raistlin · 06-08-2009, 07:44

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

ngazidja · 06-08-2009, 10:23

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

06-08-2009, 10:49

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

ngazidja · 06-08-2009, 10:57

and you're sure I can do it myself

06-08-2009, 11:03

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

Dai · 06-08-2009, 11:39

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.

ngazidja · 06-08-2009, 12:35

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.

06-08-2009, 12:56

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

ngazidja · 06-08-2009, 13:09

Just checked the iomega site, it says eSATA.

06-08-2009, 13:19

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

ngazidja · 06-08-2009, 13:50

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!)