com693 Posted July 30, 2006 Posted July 30, 2006 (edited) Hi Family, I've been looking for an external hard drive solution. Long story short - I have to spend three weeks each year at a facility that has a "tech group" that pretty much strings stuff together and hopes that it works. Not being in this elite group ... I have no control over what they like to call their "network" (or lack there-of, ). Anyway ... I have been looking for an external HD that would connect to the network but that could also be accessed over the Internet. Today, I bought a Maxtor Shared Storage Drive, 200 GB. It has an ethernet port that plugs directly in and acts like another computer on the network. Then I can go around and access data wherever on the network, with software that lets me set up users and privileges, etc, if I want. It has a few USB ports as well that you can use as a print server or places for extending the storage. I plugged our old Maxtor 160 GB in it to expand the space, so essentially I could set up a "student" drive and a "faculty" drive. Only issue is, I've been toying around with how - if at all possible - that I could now rig up Internet access to this thing. I don't know a lot about VPN or anything. Is there some sort of software or configuration I could try? I don't know if a VPN is the solution (or even close). There is a product out there by Seagate called MIRRA. I was really interested in it - it's a personal server, 400 GB space, ethernet and USB ports, yada yada. The unique thing about MIRRA was that you could access it via the Internet. But, what turned me off is exactly HOW you access it: you go to the MIRRA website, and log in with your email address and a password. Personally, I don't want a bunch of people's email addresses linked over the internet to a 400 GB server. So ... long story short ... anybody know of a way to get an external HD to be accessible via the Internet? A few more quick details: this HD plugs directly into the network via ethernet RJ45, it gets assigned an IP address. It just appears as another computer, there is no software installation required at all. The IP is assigned internally on the network. I'm thinking that obviously my public IP is going to be key in figuring out how to, if at all, access this bad boy across the net. Sorry for writing a book ... thoughts appreciated! JM Edited July 30, 2006 by com693 Quote
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