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disk sharing, 2 PC's and laptop

Tags:
  • Laptops
  • Connection
  • Computers
  • Disk Drive
  • LAN Sharing
Last response: in General Connectivity
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July 4, 2014 4:26:25 AM

Hi there.
Sorry if i'm posting under wrong category, but i really how no idea how to name it better.
My question is:
Can i somehow connect 1 SSD to 2 separate PC's and to laptop by wireless ?
For now i use windows 7 home group, but it kinda suck, because i can share only pics, vids, docs and music. Also, it has low speed. I want to physically have mentioned disk in pc, a cable to second pc, and somehow to laptop. Is it possible without buying NAS server ?
if it isn't, can i turn my laptop to home server, connect it to wifi router and to my primary PC to have faster file acces ?

If my questions aren't clear (i know, my english is pretty bad), i have 2 PC's and laptop, and i want to have fast file transfer between PC's and full acces to mentioned files by laptop.

More about : disk sharing laptop

July 4, 2014 5:08:47 AM

All you described is known as file sharing withing LAN for few decades.
3xPC connected to LAN 1 has that SSD with some folder network shared, others read/write on that network location. You can map a network share as an additional letter (just like a partition or a drive) on those other PC's.
If all those PC's will be connected to 1Gbps LAN then you wont even notice the drive is located on the other PC, if it will be 100Mbps LAN then it will limit performance quite much
Modern SSD drives have read/write speeds over 200MB/s, while 1Gbps network will get you ~120MB/s, 100Mbps will get 10x slower ... only 12MB/s.
Those figures will give you some picture about performance of such solution.
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July 4, 2014 5:26:53 AM

Ra_V_en said:
All you described is known as file sharing withing LAN for few decades.
3xPC connected to LAN 1 has that SSD with some folder network shared, others read/write on that network location. You can map a network share as an additional letter (just like a partition or a drive) on those other PC's.
If all those PC's will be connected to 1Gbps LAN then you wont even notice the drive is located on the other PC, if it will be 100Mbps LAN then it will limit performance quite much
Modern SSD drives have read/write speeds over 200MB/s, while 1Gbps network will get you ~120MB/s, 100Mbps will get 10x slower ... only 12MB/s.
Those figures will give you some picture about performance of such solution.


It depends on my wifi (i have to use it :/ ) router and extension card in pc speed (150 or 300 mbps), or on my internet speed (~8mbps)?

Couldn't i just connect PC's by ethernet cable ?
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Best solution

July 4, 2014 5:53:18 AM

It depends of the connection speed between the nodes. Lets describe it simple:
You have:
PC1+SSD you set some folder or the whole drive to be network shared = server
PC2, PC3, etc = client (sucks data from the server)

a) PC1 -> LAN card (1Gbps) -> ETH cable (UTP CAT 5E) -> Router/Switch (1Gbps)
b) PC2, PC2... -> LAN card (1Gpbs) -> ETH cable (UTP CAT 5E) -> Router/Switch (1Gbps)

If you will have connection like above then max throughput is ~120MB/s - which is excelent.
If any card, cable or router on line a) won't be compatible to 1Gbps mode then all the clients will be affected by slow down.
If any card or cable on line b) won't be compatible to 1Gbps mode then only this incompatible client will be affected.
If server will use wifi then all clients will be affected (since wifi is far slower then 1Gbps).
If one of the clients will use wifi then it will be affected by slow down.... etc etc.

Generally to have full speed between 2 computers connected to the router/switch all those computer need to have 1Gbps lan card and the router/switch itself has to be 1Gbps compatible... cables are rather typical so no surprise here... thats all.

Edit: Keep in mind that only the PC that has this SSD connected physically can take full advantage of it. You would be able to use this drive as an OS boot only for this PC.
Also it really depends what kind of use you want to achieve between other 2 PC's. If its only for some sharing data then it could be even fine over the wifi. But if you want for example install and run a game from the server PC then its far from optimal. Since you need server to be running as well. In that case it probably would be better to put that drive in an USB /or eSata case and plug it to the PC you want it at the moment.
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