Share my external hard drive

Share my external hard drive

Sharing External Hard Drive

Connecting your external hard disk drive to the Ethernet is not possible for your external drive connects only to the USB port. However, still you can share your external hard disk drive to other computers. There are two ways to do the sharing. Our first option is to connect your External Hard Disk Drive of any of your computer and share your external hard disk drive. And the second option is to purchase a Network Attached Storage or the NAS that supports USB devices.

Network Sharing

Use the Network File and Printer Sharing service of the Microsoft Windows to share your external hard disk drive over the Local Area Network or LAN. To do sharing your external hard disk drives please follow the following instructions:

Enabling Sharing in Microsoft Windows XP

1. Open your Windows Explorer by clicking Start then Run then type Explore on the dialog box or you may press Window+E to open the Windows Explorer.
2. On the Windows Explorer click Tools on the Menu Bar then Select Folder Options.
3. On the Folder Options dialog box, Click the View tab;
4. On the Advanced settings list, scroll down at the bottom then uncheck the Use simple file sharing.
5. The click Ok or Apply to apply the settings.

Sharing your Drive or Folder

1. Open your Windows Explorer by clicking Start then Run then type Explore on the dialog box or you may press Window+E to open the Windows Explorer.
2. Explore the drive or folder you want to share on the network.
3. Right click the drive or folder you want to share then select Sharing and Security on the pop-up menu. Drive or folder properties appear.
4. On the Sharing Tab, Click the share this folder option the on the Share name, type your desired share name on the box, write a comment of you want then set all other options, options are self-explainable so just select all fields or options you want to change the click ok.
5. After doing this, you will see a hand on the folder or drive icon that means the folder or drive was shared.

On Windows 7 sharing is already enabled and you can just configure your sharing and network security. Just refer to the Windows 7 help on sharing your folders and files.

Using the Network Attached Storage (NAS)

Network Attached Storage are those devices that can be connected over the Ethernet and can be accessed over the Local Area Network even in the Internet. This device contains hard disk drives inside and some devices support USB device such as Printers and External Hard Disk Drives. This device is very expensive and most of the users of this device are that a large company that handles large volumes of files and data. Individuals may use this also but it is not practical if the purpose is just for sharing external hard disk drive only. Better to use Windows File Sharing services than using this device for file sharing only.

Configuration of this device varies with each product. You may refer to their manual to configure it for your network.