Fastest External Drive Sharing Between 2 Computers

[brad81987]

Heres my situation- i have a Dell D820 laptop and my desktop. I would like to add external storage to my laptop. I know ESATA is the fastest external hard drive interface right now. Im considering either a Express Card ESATA adapter or else the Dell D/Dock has a built in PCI slot so i could add a SATA card that way.

Now, i also want to be able to use the external enclosure with my desktop concurrently. So my question is: are there any ESATA enclosures (could be a multiple drive enclosure too) that allow connections to two computers at once?

I have a feeling that answer is no, so what would be the fastest way to access the drive from both systems? Id like something faster than networking, but maybe gigabit would work.

Give me some suggestions. I want the fastest way to access an external drive from two computers simultaneously.

 

[bigballs2]

The only option is to use an Network drive. Adding gigabit network adapters to both computer will help with the transfer rate. Use a solid state drive in the external network drive case and the transfer speed will increase more. Keep in mind the transfer rate will only be as fast as the slowest component it has to go through.

 

[sminlal]

BB2 is right, simple external enclosures with eSATA or USB connections can only be connected to one computer at a time. You need a NAS if you want to share the drive directly with multiple computers. The only way to share an external enclosure with multiple computers would be to connect it to a single computer and then make it available as a shared device to other computers on the network.

Note NAS performance is limited by the speed of the network, not by the speed of the drive (unless its an awfully slow drive).