Sharing a hard drive over a router; not internet

contraband

I have a lot of media files on my laptop's tiny hard drive that are taking up too much space. I'd like to move them all to an external hard drive to free up internal space. I'd like to use a USB-equipped wireless router to share the hard drive over a secure network--this will allow me to access the files without having to keep the drive plugged into my laptop 24/7. I am NOT interested in sharing an internet connection via the router however, and would like to keep my wired ethernet connection as my primary Internet connection.

Will any combination of external hard drive and USB-equipped router work? I was going to use this router, it seems like a good deal for a good rating and 2 USB ports. I was planning on using any old USB external.

I'm on a MacBook Pro, and I'm pretty sure I know how to do it in Leopard. But, is it so easy in XP? I can't find much information on it anywhere. And would it be possible to stay connected to that network while having my Internet connection come via wired ethernet?

Infidel

So, you have a router already and want to stick with that, is what you mean?

You can turn off the DHCP on the new router (automatic network setup stuff, bad if two routers are both trying to run it) and give it an IP (say, whatever your old router is +1, 192.168.1.1 is the old? then use 192.168.1.2 etc.) and link it to the old router with a short cable.

Then you should be able to work with your new router for setting up the USB drive shares.

Not sure why you need to keep using the old router, but if you actually don't it would be easier to just replace it with this one and be done with it.

contraband

To clarify, I do not have a router currently. I'm living on campus at University and I just have a jack in the wall that I use.

I realize I say things in a really roundabout way, but I'm just looking for the simplest way to connect a hard drive to my computer without it being connected via USB.

Would it be possible to plug a cable from the ethernet wall jack to the router, as well as the external hard drive, and access both the Internet and the hard drives via ethernet cable through the router? Again apologies if this is a stupid question, but I've never done something like this before

TechBoy

I'm still not really sure what you're asking.

If you're low on USB ports, you can buy a USB hub to get more ports.
If you want to move your laptop around while still accessing internet and your HD, you can buy that router and hook the internet and the HD into it and connect to the router wirelessly. If you're worried about security or sharing your wireless internet, you can password your wireless so only you or someone with the password can connect.
You can also do the above and just disable the wireless and connect to the router with ethernet. That will also get you internet and access to your HD.

What you cannot do - and I'm not sure if you ever asked if you could do this - is connect your laptop to the wall jack, connect the HD to the router to make the HD wireless, and have the laptop connect wirelessly to the HD. I don't think the laptop will connect to the router in this case, but to cover my bases I'm going to say I may be wrong. The 2nd and 3rd options I listed about will effectively do the same thing though.

proXimity

It seems like you're basically trying to set up a wireless media server. Aside from what TechBoy said, you could possibly find and old crappy PC, put a wifi card and a large HD in it, and set it to broadcast an adhoc network. Because you are on campus, you probably don't have to pay for electricity, so that's not a problem, but noise/heat might.

Honestly, though, I don't see why you wouldn't just get that router and connect it to your wall jack, and either connect wirelessly to your laptop or run another Ethernet cable from the router to your computer. That way, you won't have the possibility of conflicting networks.

acidlacedpenguin

I'm relatively certain what is being asked is if any routers exist which have a USB port into which contra could plug the external hard drive resulting in a router that has some hard drive space with which to share with any machine that connects to the router.

I have a Linksys WRT350n and I know it supports hard drives and flash drives formatted with FAT32, but I'm not sure what the deal is with any other filesystem.