Not exactly an OS question by Sharing USB Drives on network?

I have 2 laptops, a printer, and maybe we could add in the TV and BlueRay player on my network. Actually all are wired
but could be wireless, but that's not the point.
I have one lone Windows 7 Desktop with two large internal drives and 3-4 USB drives I can plug in. I loosely call it
my file server. The down side is, it's not always on.

I would love to find a small device or a router that would let me share without the desktop.
Initially I want to just share files. If I want a picture from 1999 of a picnic then I could browse and pick.
If I can browse with Windows Explorer then I could also play the movies I have. That would be the PRIMARY use.

Being able to see and share with my TV/Blue-ray player would be a plus. They are smart, and can see my laptop photos,
so whatever feature they are using could/might work on this new device. I've seen bantered around the term DLNA.

I'll take failure comments too, heck we can all learn from failures. :-)

On 02/20/2015 10:00 AM, Big_Al wrote:
I have 2 laptops, a printer, and maybe we could add in the TV and BlueRay player on my network. Actually all are wired
but could be wireless, but that's not the point.
I have one lone Windows 7 Desktop with two large internal drives and 3-4 USB drives I can plug in. I loosely call it
my file server. The down side is, it's not always on.

I would love to find a small device or a router that would let me share without the desktop.
Initially I want to just share files. If I want a picture from 1999 of a picnic then I could browse and pick.
If I can browse with Windows Explorer then I could also play the movies I have. That would be the PRIMARY use.

Being able to see and share with my TV/Blue-ray player would be a plus. They are smart, and can see my laptop photos,
so whatever feature they are using could/might work on this new device. I've seen bantered around the term DLNA.

I'll take failure comments too, heck we can all learn from failures. :-)




For sharing files ...NAS

On 02/20/2015 11:19 AM, Stormin' Norman wrote:
On Fri, 20 Feb 2015 11:07:26 -0600, philo wrote:

On 02/20/2015 10:00 AM, Big_Al wrote:
I have 2 laptops, a printer, and maybe we could add in the TV and BlueRay player on my network. Actually all are wired
but could be wireless, but that's not the point.
I have one lone Windows 7 Desktop with two large internal drives and 3-4 USB drives I can plug in. I loosely call it
my file server. The down side is, it's not always on.

I would love to find a small device or a router that would let me share without the desktop.
Initially I want to just share files. If I want a picture from 1999 of a picnic then I could browse and pick.
If I can browse with Windows Explorer then I could also play the movies I have. That would be the PRIMARY use.

Being able to see and share with my TV/Blue-ray player would be a plus. They are smart, and can see my laptop photos,
so whatever feature they are using could/might work on this new device. I've seen bantered around the term DLNA.

I'll take failure comments too, heck we can all learn from failures. :-)




For sharing files ...NAS

I like FreeNAS.

I have played with the Asus routers that have the ability to share files from
USB drives, but the file sharing is so slow as to make it virtually useless.

To run FreeNAS you will need a spare 64bit machine, so, you might be better off
just running your desktop.

You could also accomplish what you want with a Raspberry Pi or other utility
type computer. In the end, you are going to be running something, so once
again, you might just run your desktop. I doubt the power savings will be that
tremendous unless your desktop machine is a real power-pig.




Actually I was thinking more along this line


http://www.amazon.com/s/?ie=UTF8&key...l_8ca5vsgg4y_b

On 02/20/2015 12:05 PM, Stormin' Norman wrote:



Actually I was thinking more along this line


http://www.amazon.com/s/?ie=UTF8&key...l_8ca5vsgg4y_b

I haven't tried one of those, but it looks like a reasonable alternative. I
would carefully read through the 400, 1 star reviews before I purchased it.




I just popped that up there as an example... it was one of the lower
priced models.

I'm sure there are better-reviewed units out there for a little more
money but still reasonably priced.


A few years back I was thinking about setting up a full server in my
basement but when I looked at the power consumption realized I'd be
better off with a low power networked drive.


Though I had all data backed up...I recently lost two hard drives on a
standby machine that were taken out due to a power supply failure.


I've seen plenty of blown power supplies but this was the first time I
saw one take out hard drives.

Backups are good!

Hi, AL.

As they say: Bingle is your friend. ;)

DLNA = Digital Living Network Alliance
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital...twork_Alliance

RC
--
R. C. White, CPA
San Marcos, TX

Microsoft Windows MVP (2002-2010)
Windows Live Mail 2012 (Build 16.4.3528.0331) in Win8.1 Pro w/Media Center


"Big_Al" wrote in message ...

I have 2 laptops, a printer, and maybe we could add in the TV and BlueRay
player on my network. Actually all are wired
but could be wireless, but that's not the point.
I have one lone Windows 7 Desktop with two large internal drives and 3-4 USB
drives I can plug in. I loosely call it
my file server. The down side is, it's not always on.

I would love to find a small device or a router that would let me share
without the desktop.
Initially I want to just share files. If I want a picture from 1999 of a
picnic then I could browse and pick.
If I can browse with Windows Explorer then I could also play the movies I
have. That would be the PRIMARY use.

Being able to see and share with my TV/Blue-ray player would be a plus.
They are smart, and can see my laptop photos,
so whatever feature they are using could/might work on this new device.
I've seen bantered around the term DLNA.

I'll take failure comments too, heck we can all learn from failures. :-)

Stormin' Norman wrote on 2/20/2015 2:41 PM:
On Fri, 20 Feb 2015 12:56:11 -0600, philo wrote:

On 02/20/2015 12:05 PM, Stormin' Norman wrote:



Actually I was thinking more along this line


http://www.amazon.com/s/?ie=UTF8&key...l_8ca5vsgg4y_b

I haven't tried one of those, but it looks like a reasonable alternative. I
would carefully read through the 400, 1 star reviews before I purchased it.




I just popped that up there as an example... it was one of the lower
priced models.

I'm sure there are better-reviewed units out there for a little more
money but still reasonably priced.


A few years back I was thinking about setting up a full server in my
basement but when I looked at the power consumption realized I'd be
better off with a low power networked drive.


Though I had all data backed up...I recently lost two hard drives on a
standby machine that were taken out due to a power supply failure.


I've seen plenty of blown power supplies but this was the first time I
saw one take out hard drives.

Backups are good!

I had the same thing happen two months ago. Power supply failure caused a
discreet component on the HD control board to explode (or maybe it was the
reverse). I had a number of identical, unused drives so I swapped the control
board and power supply, fired it up and all the data was just fine. Dumb luck.

If I weren't so lazy, I would repair the PS and control board...... maybe some
day.

See now, the interesting fact is that you kept the blown parts. :-)

R. C. White wrote on 2/20/2015 2:47 PM:
Hi, AL.

As they say: Bingle is your friend. ;)

DLNA = Digital Living Network Alliance
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital...twork_Alliance

RC
--
R. C. White, CPA
San Marcos, TX

Microsoft Windows MVP (2002-2010)
Windows Live Mail 2012 (Build 16.4.3528.0331) in Win8.1 Pro w/Media Center


"Big_Al" wrote in message ...

I have 2 laptops, a printer, and maybe we could add in the TV and BlueRay
player on my network. Actually all are wired
but could be wireless, but that's not the point.
I have one lone Windows 7 Desktop with two large internal drives and 3-4 USB
drives I can plug in. I loosely call it
my file server. The down side is, it's not always on.

I would love to find a small device or a router that would let me share
without the desktop.
Initially I want to just share files. If I want a picture from 1999 of a
picnic then I could browse and pick.
If I can browse with Windows Explorer then I could also play the movies I
have. That would be the PRIMARY use.

Being able to see and share with my TV/Blue-ray player would be a plus.
They are smart, and can see my laptop photos,
so whatever feature they are using could/might work on this new device.
I've seen bantered around the term DLNA.

I'll take failure comments too, heck we can all learn from failures. :-)

Sorry I wasn't real clear, but I have read DLNA since I got it with the 60" TV I bought. Had to research. And it
shares all my media fine. At least on my laptop. And I guess if I had a usb drive plugged in and shared in that
group of items, then those too would show on the TV. Not sure how much the usb might slow data transfer though.
Would be an interesting test one day.

I do have a 64G usb (tiny little sucker) in the Blue-Ray and I can really put a ton of 1.4 to 2G movies on it. That's a
cool way around movie viewing.

On 02/20/2015 01:41 PM, Stormin' Norman wrote:


snip
d!

I had the same thing happen two months ago. Power supply failure caused a
discreet component on the HD control board to explode (or maybe it was the
reverse). I had a number of identical, unused drives so I swapped the control
board and power supply, fired it up and all the data was just fine. Dumb luck.

If I weren't so lazy, I would repair the PS and control board...... maybe some
day.




In my situation I did have an identical hard drive that was not in the
machine, but replacing the electronics with the good one, still did not
get the drives working again.

It was no big deal as it was a ten year old XP-64 machine I had built
for my wife and everything was backed up several times.


Once I did get lucky with a drive that was not even detected by the
BIOS...I found a SMT capacitor that had a bad solder joint and one end
was raised a bit off the board. Re-soldered and all OK.

Other than that I don't bother with board-level repairs...new stuff is
so cheap it's not worth it.

On 02/20/2015 04:10 PM, Stormin' Norman wrote:


I had the same thing happen two months ago. Power supply failure caused a
discreet component on the HD control board to explode (or maybe it was the
reverse). I had a number of identical, unused drives so I swapped the control
board and power supply, fired it up and all the data was just fine. Dumb luck.

If I weren't so lazy, I would repair the PS and control board...... maybe some
day.

See now, the interesting fact is that you kept the blown parts. :-)

Yeah, I cringe at the throw-away mentality and I love fixing things. Hard to
fix things if you don't have parts, so I save a lot of stuff for repair
purposes.




I believe in fixing computers and have boxes of spare parts...
so it's not worth wasting my time doing component-level repair.

Also fix other things around the house and keep a lot of things going
most people would not bother with.