need help on setting up a network hard drive

[scouter111]

does anyone know how to set up a external hard drive and add it to a network thu a windows pc but i have a mac i wish to use it with also?

 

[Praetor]

Ok lemme get this right:
- You have an external drive
- Two computers: a mac and a PC
- You want the drive to be used as a network storage drive without being software-attatched to either the PC or the mac? If thats the case I dont think that's doable short of setting up a NAS/SAN (which typically is expensive) ... now unless that external drive comes with a LAN jack which i dont think it does, you'll have to software-bind it to one of the machines

How
- Establish a working network between all the connected machines via a router or something
- Fire up the windows machine
- Install an FTP server (since you wont be able to use traditional filesharing) and setup an account
- Start the FTP server, configure firewall(s) as needed
- Login remotely using the Mac

Here's a free FTP server:
http://www.serv-u.com/customer/record.asp?prod=su

 

[scouter111]

yea that is what i want to do but how would you get the mac and windows machines networked with the router?

 

[Praetor]

how would you get the mac and windows machines networked with the router?

I dont knwo macs very well but uh .. plug it in? If Macs support DHCP and the TCP/IP protocol you should be fine

 

[scouter111]

i tried the software and i cant not get it to work it keeps saying it is the wrong password so is there any othere software you know of?

 

[Praetor]

i tried the software and I cant not get it to work it keeps saying it is the wrong password so is there any othere software you know of?

dont set a password Any other (free or otherwise) FTP server will have roughly the same design and implementation

 

[scouter111]

ok thanks, but when i set it up i still cant access the hard drive to password is off and the domain is on the internet but no off my computers can find it

 

[Praetor]

ok thanks, but when I set it up I still cant access the hard drive to password is off and the domain is on the internet but no off my computers can find it

Ok so lemme get this straight:
1. You installed ServU on the Windows machine
2. You ran the ServU Administrator proggie, went down to where is says "Domain", made a domain and set it to "automatically select ip" (i.e., leave the IP box blank)
3. You then when to "users" and created a password-less user
4. Just to be safe you stopped the FTP server and started it up again
5. And no luck?

 

[Dave2k]

You want to be able to share the drive through the XP machine? Like praetor said you're going to have to use an FTP service, make sure you set that for local network only (otherwise you're going to be broadcasting your FTP service to the outside internet if you've got FTP service enabled through your router).

You can try downloading a program for the Mac OS called 'Dave', its a 3rd party Mac filesharing app.

 

[Praetor]

(otherwise you're going to be broadcasting your FTP service to the outside internet if you've got FTP service enabled through your router).

Of course you can always lock down with OTP and IP restrictions

 

[Dave2k]

that works too.

;p quiet you, i had been at work all day.