how can i share an external hard drive over my home network.?

Question

My home network consists of a laptop (Vista) and a PC (XP SP3). My external hard drive is hooked up to the pc and i want to make it available to the laptop as a network drive. I am connected through a netgear wireless router.

Answer 1

right click it and click "sharing and security..."

Answer 2

File sharing Vista with XP



Vista and XP machines:

1. Must be on the same workgroup

2. Both machines CANNOT have the same conmputer name

3. Both machines CANNOT have the same user name

4. Both machines must have a computer description



Vista machine only:

1. User account must be password protected

2. Network must be set to private (If using Hamachi also set it to private)

3. Network discovery set to on

4. Public folder sharing set to on

5. File sharing set to on

6. Guest account must be turned off



XP machine only:

1. Install Microsofts patch here http://support.microsoft.com/kb/922120

1. User account must be password protected

2. Turn file sharing on

3. Guest account must be turned off



If you run Hamachi, then both computers will need to be connected.



After all of those are set, completely power down both machines (not just restart) then turn the computers

back on wait for them to completely logon the network, and there you go! Thats it!

Answer 3

you need to setup up a NAS drive.

the most simple way is to do something like this

http://www.jakeludington.com/windows_xp/20060113_sharing_a_hard_drive.html

or if your external hard drive has a ethernet port you can attach it to the router without needing to the pc on.