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I have a 500Gb external drive that I plug into my MacBook. I want to make that drive available to the 2 other macs we have in the house AND my MacBook via my wifi network.
Is that possible? If so, how?
Is there some kind of gizmo that I could plug my external drive into that'd talk to my wifi network? Google hasn't helped me yet.
I know I could go out and by a NAS drive, but I'm trying to use the one I already have.
You should be able to just share it as a drive on the MacBook that it's connected to.
I think what Mac calls it is Personal File Sharing.
The new airport extreme router has a USB port that will take an external USB drive among other things.
***Earlier Airport Extremes and Airport Expresses have/had USB ports, but they only supported printers.
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Bingo! Exactly what I was looking for. Thanks boss!
you can go the airport extreme route, but you can also turn on personal file sharing as mentioned.
all you have to do is hook up the hard drive to a system that'll always be on, or at least is stationary (probably a desktop system if you have one), then on that same system go:
System Preferences > Sharing > Services > check Personal File Sharing
then to connect to the drive all's you gotta do is go to the Network pane in a Finder window from, say, your MacBook, and connect to the system you just set to share. enter in the username and password of the system you're connecting TO (save it in your keychain if you don't want to enter it in every time), and choose the drive from the choices given.
that way, you don't have to drop $179 on a wireless hub, seeing that you have one that's already in working order. of course, you said you connect this drive to your MacBook, so if you wouldn't necessarily want it connected to another system (for whatever reason), the NAS route via airport extreme is definitely an option.