Home Network Question!!

[Storm20]

This goes out to all the techies out there, second part of the question to all the gamers out there.

At the moment I have 3 laptops and a PC, 2 laptops are running vista, pc is running xp and the other laptop is a macbook pro running snowlep. Anyway i have the PC connected to a d-link di-524up router, not too sure if anyone knows about this one but it has 4 ethernet ports + 1usb port. I also have a WD 500gb external that is attached to the pc. What I am trying to acheive is to have that external hd accessable, even once the pc has powered off. With my current setup is there anyway of being able to do that.

Second part is a quick question. From that HD, what exactly do i need to do, to be able to access the video/music off of there from my ps3.

any help would be greatly appreciated.

Cheers

 

[yeah_okay]

PS3mediaserver
http://code.google.com/p/ps3mediaserver/

If you plug your HD into your PC, by running this program on your PC, you can easily play all your videos and music through your PS3. Very simple and easy to use.

 

[CF]

Not possible. If you tried to connect your external Hard drive to your network router, the devices at each end of the link do not know what to do with the thing at the other end. You have to buy a different device, a Network Attached Storage device (NAS). This device has a dedicated computer built-in to be a network client. Your current external HD needs the PC to act as its network client.

 

[Storm20]

PS3mediaserver
http://code.google.com/p/ps3mediaserver/

If you plug your HD into your PC, by running this program on your PC, you can easily play all your videos and music through your PS3. Very simple and easy to use.

Cheers mate, that program is bloody brilliant!!!

 

[Rod Stroker]

Not possible. If you tried to connect your external Hard drive to your network router, the devices at each end of the link do not know what to do with the thing at the other end. You have to buy a different device, a Network Attached Storage device (NAS). This device has a dedicated computer built-in to be a network client. Your current external HD needs the PC to act as its network client.

This sounds about right. I've recently been mucking around with the following NAS from Synology. So far so good
http://www.synology.com/enu/products/DS209/index.php