External HD + Wireless?

[Ramor]

Was wondering if it's possible to get an external harddrive and hook it up to my wireless router or computer and allow it to be accessible by my roommates, just throwing movies and TV shows and whatnot on there?

Or, would it be possible to throw a bunch of media on there and then hook it up to a TV and just allow the TV to run through the shows at random?

[SephYuyX]

Take an external HD to a PC thats on the network and share it, but the PC has to be turned on all times. Or buy a network HD that can just be plugged into the router.

[Zosi]

The thing you're looking for is called 'network-attached storage' (NAS), which is a hard drive enclosure (optionally with drive included) that has an embedded CPU and ethernet port that lets it serve up the files on the drive via SMB/CIFS (Windows file sharing) or other protocols. You would buy one, then plug it in to your router and set it up, and it'd act just like a seperate PC with a hard drive in it.

Newegg has a whole category devoted to NAS stuff, ranging from the reasonably cheap to the obscenely expensive. The cheapest are going to run in the low $100 range without a drive, mid to high $100 range with one included.

[Fallso]

Routers that support a file server are able to have one, they're usually USB though so try and get one with a SATA port, they're more expensive but well worth it.

[Ramor]

Take an external HD to a PC thats on the network and share it, but the PC has to be turned on all times. Or buy a network HD that can just be plugged into the router.

I started dicking around with just a folder from my own computer, it's taking about an hour and 45 minutes to copy something about 320MB from my computer to his, now..if I get an external HD would it be faster or slower? Or are there different speed ratings on these types of things?

[octopus]

If you're transferring a lot of files, you probably should zip it up before sending. It can slow down a lot if you're transferring 100 files total to 320MB compared to if you're transferring one 320MB file.

But yeah, transferring 320MB data shouldn't take an hour and 45 minutes, even if it's wireless.