two computers, 1 hd external

[taintedplay]

im about to buy this laptop: MSI A6200-021US, and want to have an external drive for it. But, i want my desktop to also be connected to it. I already have the hard drives, is there enclosures that can do 2 usb port outs? or would i have to go NAS

 

[carnageX]

Why don't you just hook it up to the desktop at all times, and just share the drive over your network so you can access it from the laptop as well? This is what I do with several of my drives (external and internal).

 

[S0ULphIRE]

No, there's nothing like that. You can get very cheap enclosures which have an RJ45 socket instead of a USB or firewire port, so if your desktop isn't on all the time, then yes NAS is the way to go.

 

[CalcProgrammer1]

I just turned an old build into a home server, works great and was cheap. Originally I just had the server plug into my 1.5TB external drive with USB and share it on the network, but I bought another 1.5TB and put it inside the server, I use the external as a backup/portable server (since they have identical contents and I synchronize them often, I can take all the contents of my server by taking the external drive with me). With a real PC for a server you can also run media streaming/sharing, camera, printer share, etc.

My server is an AMD Sempron 2600+, 2GB DDR RAM, XP Pro with 120GB IDE main drive + 1.5TB SATA storage drive, not an exceptional build but it's plenty for a home server.