Wireless File Server

I want to setup a wireless file server since I hate moving my external HDD from place to place cuz the wires go behind my HomeTheatre setup.

This is basically my network: (house has 3 floors: basement then kitchen living room then upstairs)

Router connected to 2 pcs in basement (wired)
Home theatre pc connected wirelessly on 3rd floor
laptop connected wirelessly

i want my laptop to be able to access files on the HTPC and the external hard drive attached. How do i go about doing this

 

Share the folder or the entire partition. Then you can access it from any computer on your network. Right click on the drive letter or folder > Sharing tab.
Or you can connect to the hidden admin shares by typing \\computer_name(or IP)\c$ (c$ is for the C drive, enter the respective drive letter for other partitions followed by a $ sign). Give the administrator’s credentials, when asked.

 

And, just to clarify, that will work with the external hard drive if you plug it into one of the USB ports on the HTPC.

 

Just making sure that you realize that wireless bandwidth is shared between ALL computers connecting to the same access point. So if you only have one access point, a file copy to a wireless connected laptop from a wireless connected file server will go half as fast as if it were from a wired-in fileserver to a wireless laptop, all other things being equal. Especially since it's an HTPC I'm guessing you're talking multimedia files, and those SUCK copying over wireless. I had my media center hooked up via wireless for a while (set the DHCP to issue a specific address to that MAC in DD-WRT), and I still resorted to using my external USB drives to copy data around.

If you're "permanently" in the house, and own it, the best thing I can suggest is to make friends with someone in the cabling business Wireless is great for many things, but large file transfers are not one of those.

 

Good points. Of course, if you own the house and you're not married and not too picky about never being asked to do a photo-shoot for Architectural Digest, you could just build a DIY network with, at minimum, a roll of sturdy ethernet cable and a staplegun.

 

How do you go about doing this in Linux?

 

You need to setup a samba server.
Take a look at Ubuntu Documentation:Setting Up Samba, it would be more or less same for other distros as well.

 

Thanks. I will check that out and see how it works for me.