sharing a hd

[taintedplay]

im going to college soon, and taking a laptop and a desktop. I have alot of media on my desktops main and secondary hd's, and i want to access that from the laptop also. how would i accomplish this?

 

[Yami]

Unless you want to access the media on both comps at the same time, you could get a hard drive enclosure and turn the desktop's secondary drive into an external storage drive. They cost about $30 for a decent USB 2.0 enclosure.

The other way is to use a crossover cable, which is a differently wired ethernet cable which allows you to connect two computers directly via the ethernet ports.

There is also something called a NAS (Network Attached Storage, I believe), which is principally an external storage drive(s) which is accessed via the network. However these cost $200+ to set up a halfway decent one.

Which way sounds better?

 

[taintedplay]

another idea is maybe like remote access, like i know i used to use hamachi to make computers w internet look like they were lan, but that would be slower than direct connect

 

[hmammen]

best way and cheapest would be external hdd. Did the same thing between my desktop and macbook for college. or like yami said, crossover cable, but you have to have two available LAN slots on your mobo(One for internet access and the second for the crossover)

 

[Yami]

but you have to have two available LAN slots on your mobo(One for internet access and the second for the crossover)

That's true, though you could share the internet connection from the laptop's wireless to the desktop.

 

[hmammen]

also true.

 

[Yami]

another idea is maybe like remote access, like i know i used to use hamachi to make computers w internet look like they were lan, but that would be slower than direct connect

I would suggest you do that, then, if you are familiar with how it will be set up, and it does what you want.