1 external Drive 2 computers

[pairustwo]

I have a mac and a pc and a external hard drive with usb2 and firewire connections.

What would happen I plugged it into both comptuers for a shared storage solution?

I understand that they may not both be able to access it at the same time but would there be any trouble?

I mean one of the drives on my pc is already shared with the mac and they both have access to that, Would this be any different?

Pairustwo

 

[COD2_fanatic]

you should be able to plug it into one of the computers (the Windows one is probably easier) and set it up to be sharable over the network (i presume you have a network), just google it and you will figure it out if you dont know how to do it

 

[Nitestick]

yes it would be different because with the first shared drive the second pc is actually accessing the hdd through the first. you can either use USB or firewire but you should be abble to share it over the network like you've already done.

 

[pairustwo]

I don't want to share the external drive over the network through the PC or through the mac because both computers are not always on at the same time.

I was hoping that the external hard drive could be available to either the PC when the Mac is off and available to the Mac when the PC is off.

The external drive has its own power supply so it can always be on and always be connected to (say) the PC through USB2 and to the Mac through Firewire.

This way I could turn either machine on and have access to the external hard drive.

That was the set up I had in mind when I asked if both machines could access the external drive at the same time.

Pairstwo

 

[pairustwo]

I mean, there would be a warning in the manual if connecting the external HDD to two machines simultainiously was a bad idea, right?

Pairustwo