External Drive + 2 Computers

[Tazman]

Before I try this, I figured I'd run it by y'all.

I have an external 120GB firewire / USB 2 drive. I use it for most for storage of my data and backups of my programs.

Here's what I was wondering.

I usually plug it in either my laptop or my desktop (both running XP Home). I've never had the drive connected to both computers at the same time. What would happen if I had it connected via firewire to both computers at the same time over a LAN?

Wouldn't Windows on either system freak? I'm only asking before I hose either system or the data on the external.

Anyone ever do this?

TIA

Mike

[SeanC]

If you're just creating a network share on one of them and connecting to the share from the other then it should work fine.

If you mean you want to physically connect the drive via USB or Firewire to both systems, I don't know if that is possible or not.

Sean

[Tazman]

Thanks Sean .

I did want to physically hook the drive up and run it on both computers at the same time just to see if it would. And I did try it yesterday. Here's what happens.

When I turn the power on to the external drive connected to both computers with firewire, one computer would reconize it while the other wouldn't. If I toggled the power on / off to the drive, the other computer reconizes it and the first doesn't.

It didn't seem to affect either system.

I guess I wanted to try this because (other than I was bored )) I wanted to see how much faster firewire / USB 2 was in data transfer as opposed to over ethernet. I still have yet to benchmark it. Although it did transfer 27GB in about 30 minutes via firewire. Later I'll transfer that over ethernet and see how long it takes.

Yes, I DO have too much time on my hands .

Mike