Using Laptop as Server

R

reddDesign

New Member
I have a 2004? eMachines M6809 sitting around needing a harddrive. I just bought the Netgear Storage Central setup with a 500g Seagate. Ideally I'd like to be able to remotely access the hdd since I travel a lot with my new laptop, and keep videos, pictures, documents etc on the Seagate.

So, I'm kinda new to this whole networking thing, my bf is a network geek but I bug him all the time about it so I figured I'd venture out and get answers for myself.

Unfortunately I have dynamic IP's since I'm a poor college student in my apt, but I have a DYNDNS account and my router set to upgrade to it. What I want to do is get a harddrive for the eMachines and set it up to run 24/7 as a file server.

I'm not concerned about cooling, the computer never had an issue with sitting there closed days on end before, and it has decent performance for being a few years old, and it wouldn't be unattended all the time, mostly only on weekends, during the week I'd be able to access the HDD myself locally.

So, question is, once I get XP Pro running on the eMachines what do I need to do to get it up and running and accessed remotely?
 
You'll need to forward the appropriate ports on from your router config to your shared HD. You could set up FTP, with XP Pro and IIS. Google it and there should be online walk thru that take you step by step.
 
ok so I have the laptop set up at home, connected to the network and on. when i'm home i can easily connect to it with remote desktop, and i have no-ip.org setup for the laptop in order to remote connect from anywhere.

when i go to log into that computer i enter in the user and pw and this comes up:

This computer cannot connect to the remote computer. Try connecting again.

I can ping my no-ip.org domain and get the IP back of my other laptop but it won't actually connect to it.

Any ideas?
 
Have you port-forwarded the router? When the packets of data containing the remote desktop data hit the router you need to set a port that will set the data flowing to the laptop, a good website is http://www.portforward.com - that site's helped me quite a bit!
 
If what you bought is a Network storage drive (NAS) that you bought you shouldn't need to run a laptop as a dedicated server at all because that is basically what the hard drive is meant to do.

If this isn't the case, is there a firewall installed on the machine blocking your incoming connection?
 
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