Sharing Drives

[IcSyU]

So I went out and bought an external hard drive last week, and I'm trying to set it up so that I can access it from both my laptop as well as my PS3. Right now for me to add anything to it, I have to unplug it from my PS3 and hook it up into my computer. I have a router, but it's just a cheap one that doesn't have the ability to hook USB up.

Router: D-Link WBR-2310 RangeBooster G Router

External Hard Drive: My Book Essential Edition 1 TB Hard Drives ( WDH1U10000 )

I do have a USB hub, so would I be able to hook the external drive to the USB hub with the laptop and my PS3 both with USB cords? I ask because I don't want to go out and spend the money on the USB cords only to figure out I can't do it. (I have USBs, but I'd have to get USBs with the same end because mine are all mini-USB). If none of these work, does anyone have a suggestion as to what I can do?

USB hub: Dynex :: Products For Your Digital Life - Dynex 4-Port USB 2.0 Hub

Thanks in advance!

 

[jumbopackage]

So I went out and bought an external hard drive last week, and I'm trying to set it up so that I can access it from both my laptop as well as my PS3. Right now for me to add anything to it, I have to unplug it from my PS3 and hook it up into my computer. I have a router, but it's just a cheap one that doesn't have the ability to hook USB up.

Router: D-Link WBR-2310 RangeBooster G Router

External Hard Drive: My Book Essential Edition 1 TB Hard Drives ( WDH1U10000 )

I do have a USB hub, so would I be able to hook the external drive to the USB hub with the laptop and my PS3 both with USB cords? I ask because I don't want to go out and spend the money on the USB cords only to figure out I can't do it. (I have USBs, but I'd have to get USBs with the same end because mine are all mini-USB). If none of these work, does anyone have a suggestion as to what I can do?

USB hub: Dynex :: Products For Your Digital Life - Dynex 4-Port USB 2.0 Hub

Thanks in advance!

You can only connect a USB device to one host at a time, either your PC or your laptop.

I have no idea how PS3s network, but your only option is to have the drive shared over the network from your laptop or another computer.

 

[bluestarcyclone]

Keep it plugged into the computer, and enable the sharing of the drive. The PS3 should be able to detect shared files. I'm not doing it via a usb drive, but I've got a lot of my files shared on my desktop computer so i can stream them to the PS3

 

[CycloneTony]

The thing that always made me mad is that I had an external and never put it to use so I was just going to use it for my PS3 and just go back and forth with my PS3 and PC well that was a big NOPE! My PS3 uses FAT32 which is a MAC format and my PC uses the NTSF format. I finally converted my external to FAT32 per some program I found online and just use it for extra storage for games and movies but can't use it on my PC anymore. Pretty Dumb but understandable. I was also told I could download a PC friendly opearting system on my PS3 but that went way over my head ill pass haha.

 

[IcSyU]

Keep it plugged into the computer, and enable the sharing of the drive. The PS3 should be able to detect shared files. I'm not doing it via a usb drive, but I've got a lot of my files shared on my desktop computer so i can stream them to the PS3

How would my PS3 do this without something connecting the PS3 to the computer? I don't have the wireless turned on on the PS3 because I've got it hard wired to play online.

 

[dmclone]

Do you have Windows Media Player 11 on your PC? If so you should be able to network your PS3 to your PC and share videos, music, and pictures.


Any video, music, pictures you have on your new drive will be able to be accessed by both your PS3 and your PC.

 

[IcSyU]

Do you have Windows Media Player 11 on your PC? If so you should be able to network your PS3 to your PC and share videos, music, and pictures.


Any video, music, pictures you have on your new drive will be able to be accessed by both your PS3 and your PC.

It's on here, just have to actually install it. (I use iTunes)

 

[dmclone]

It's on here, just have to actually install it. (I use iTunes)

I use Itunes as well. You don't actually have to have the software running to make it work. Once you choose what folders to share you really never need to open it again.

 

[jumbopackage]

The thing that always made me mad is that I had an external and never put it to use so I was just going to use it for my PS3 and just go back and forth with my PS3 and PC well that was a big NOPE! My PS3 uses FAT32 which is a MAC format and my PC uses the NTSF format. I finally converted my external to FAT32 per some program I found online and just use it for extra storage for games and movies but can't use it on my PC anymore. Pretty Dumb but understandable. I was also told I could download a PC friendly opearting system on my PS3 but that went way over my head ill pass haha.

FAT32 is an older version of windows format, actually. It's very simple to format a volume for FAT32. Just change the volume type to FAT32 in the format dialog.

The only quirk is that windows wont' allow you to format a drive larger than 32GB to the FAT32 format. It can read them, just cant' format them, which is somewhat annoying.

Edit: Any version of Windows since Windows 95 will happily read FAT32 partitions up to 2 exabytes.

 

[bluestarcyclone]

How would my PS3 do this without something connecting the PS3 to the computer? I don't have the wireless turned on on the PS3 because I've got it hard wired to play online.

The file streams from computer to router to ps3, i've got both wired in as well, since i was streaming some pretty high resolution feeds of tv shows.

 

[IcSyU]

Right now I've got the external drive just hooked up to the PS3 and it takes f-o-r-e-v-e-r to load all the music (10,000+ songs) from the folder..will that speed up?

 

[bluestarcyclone]

No idea, i've never shared that much, only a hundred files or so... about 150gb, but all in video files.

 

[IcSyU]

Thanks to everyone for their help...finally got the stupid thing working :yes:

 

[CycloneTony]

FAT32 is an older version of windows format, actually. It's very simple to format a volume for FAT32. Just change the volume type to FAT32 in the format dialog.

The only quirk is that windows wont' allow you to format a drive larger than 32GB to the FAT32 format. It can read them, just cant' format them, which is somewhat annoying.

Edit: Any version of Windows since Windows 95 will happily read FAT32 partitions up to 2 exabytes.

Yeah I saw that but I can rack up 32GB for my PS3 pretty easily