Trying to set up external hds in network

[gravedigga]

Hi everyone,

I have a desire that might be impossible, but I figured it would be worth asking anyway.

I have two external harddrives, a laptop, and a regular wireless router. Since I frequently move around my apartment with my laptop, it is a pain that every time I want to see something that is on one of my externals (or put something onto one of them), I have to either move the laptop to one of the harddrives or one of the harddrives to the laptop. In an ideal world, especially since I have a wireless router, I could somehow set up the router as a sort of hub to the externals, so that wherever I am I could put stuff on or take stuff off. I'm pretty sure that if I simply had a second computer this would actually be quite doable. But, since I do not, I'm wondering if it's still possible. Spring break just started today, and this seems like a worthy project for me to try to work on and read up on over the week. Can anyone give me any advice?

Thanks for any help. Using Linux Mint (and these forums) for the past six months has been outstanding!

[McLovin]

There are a few different options to go here, if you can find an old computer, you don't need anything good, just an old i386, 256 ram, you can build a NAS box using FreeNAS, I have done this with great success, or you could get yourself a network USB hub, or a preconfigured NAS drive from Newegg just do a search for NAS, or network usb hub, however those will cost upwards of $150 USD. Linksys also sels a network attachable usb piece, but it is only one usb port so you would need as many as you have external drives.