Wireless hard drive setup with 2 PCs and home network

Hey guys... So I have 2 PCs... My new 1720 in my signature with Windows Vista Home Premium, and my old Inspiron 5150 with XP.

I'm sick of losing access to my external hard drives when I take my laptop to my bedroom or the living room, especially because I have my very disorganized MP3 collection on one of these drives.

I have a regular 802.11G wireless network.

So, when I take my new laptop away from my desk, I'd like to be able to connect my hard drives to my old laptop and be able to access the drives through the wireless connection from my new laptop just like I would if the drives were connected via USB. So I'd be able to browse the different drive letters through Windows Explorer.

Hopefully that explanation is simple enough.

I don't think sharing the drives through a regular Windows home network setup would work, but maybe I'm wrong and there's a way to do it with Windows?

Thanks in advance...

 

You might have to reshare the drives every time you hook them up to the old notebook if the drives move around a lot, but you should be able to share them just like any other folder on your old notebook. As long as you can access network shares located on your old notebook, you should be able to access the hard drives.

 

Incidentally, your post makes it sound like you are at least marginally familiar with sharing drives through the Windows network. Please let me know if this isn't the case, and I'll try to explain the basics.

 

If you want to just share the whole HDD right click C:/ whatever it is, select sharing look down to sharing and network security,click share share this folder on the network, put the letter of the drive in the empty space,also click allow user on to change files. The other way is to map a network drive to the folders that the music is in like thain1982 suggest.

 

maybe you can get a networked external hard drive. leave it pluged into the router, then you dont have to worry about having both laptops on.

 

@nizzy1115:

Now why would you want to go and spoil the fun of a good adventure in networking? =) On a more serious note, while that solution certainly makes sense, it does kind of make the drives he already owns kind of superfluous, which is never a fun thing.

 

You can purchase a NAS (network attached storage) enclosure with your drive inside attached to your router. Then map it on each computer and each computer will see it as a drive within itself. The good news is that you wont have to have the other computer turned on.

 

OK guys... So I did it through Windows. I shared the drives on my 5150, then I right clicked on the network locations on my 1720 and mapped out the drives to their respective drive letters.

Working fine, and I can play MP3s... But I would also like to be able to transfer video files from the drives to my (new) laptop. I just tried twice to transfer a 160 MB file back and forth, and both receiving and sending the file took over 2 and a half minutes!

I was not downloading or uploading anything from the Internet, and the connection is 54 mbps, which is around 6.75 megabytes per second. The file transfered at around 950 KB/sec! It should have done it a lot faster. 3 or 4 megs/second would be satisfactory. Both computers have wireless G (the 1720 has wireless N), and both are getting a strong signal.

What gives? :/

And what's a good app to let me monitor my network's transfer speed?

Edit: Is this because the computers aren't communicating directly with each other and have to go through the router?

 

If you are doing this wirelessly I would think the rates are about right you wouldn't get 54Mbps for transferring files.Ethernet would've yeilded faster rates.

 

Read this article on 802.11g speeds.

Basically, you really only get about 27Mbps of actual TCP throughput, which translates to 3.4MBps of throughput, at absolute best. If your network is in any kind of compatibility mode, you get dropped to 1.52, or even less than 1MBps in some cases. Which is what you're seeing. If you don't have any 802.11b cards or AP's, set both your laptop and WAP to do 802.11g-only, and that may speed things up. But you're basically seeing normal wireless speeds. Note also that all kinds of other devices can cause interference, lowering speeds further. 2.4GHz cordless phones (yours or a neighbors), other wireless access points nearby, even just running a microwave.

 

No offense Pitabred but I would never read that.

I'm pretty sure there's nothing I can do at this point. I'll take what I can get... This is good for music, and that's about it, which is not bad. It's a temporary solution I guess until I can get some better hardware.

 

None taken That's why I explained the gist of it. Basically, you're kinda stuck with it because that's just how 802.11g works.