Turn my IDE drive into an Ethernet drive?

WCanyon

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May 9, 2005
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I have a 120GB IDE drive that is attached to one of my two computers. Since I use the second computer rarely (the one the drive is attached to) I'd like to pull the drive out and somehow turn it into a network hard drive. I'm considering just buying a XiMeta drive too, but using an existing drive might save me money.

So my questions:
1) has anyone here turned an PATA IDE into a stand-alone network drive?
2) which enclosure did you use?
3) did it all work simply and easily (no big problems)?
 

Crashman

Polypheme
Former Staff
Nah, Tom's Networking had a review of a decent-priced network hard drive box. It was like a regular external drive box, but had a little extra hardware.

<font color=blue>Only a place as big as the internet could be home to a hero as big as Crashman!</font color=blue>
<font color=red>Only a place as big as the internet could be home to an ego as large as Crashman's!</font color=red>
 

Crashman

Polypheme
Former Staff
Nope, that's not it, that one actually has more features and cost probably 2x as much.

Yes, you'd have to set up your router or switch properly with any network device.

<font color=blue>Only a place as big as the internet could be home to a hero as big as Crashman!</font color=blue>
<font color=red>Only a place as big as the internet could be home to an ego as large as Crashman's!</font color=red>
 

WCanyon

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May 9, 2005
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That looks pretty good. It's similar to the XiMeta NetDisk, which I was also looking at. But I got the impression from a review that the XiMeta had decent bundled software.
 

Crashman

Polypheme
Former Staff
Yeh, that cheap one is similar to the one I remember, but for 2.5" drives rather than 3.5" drives.

<font color=blue>Only a place as big as the internet could be home to a hero as big as Crashman!</font color=blue>
<font color=red>Only a place as big as the internet could be home to an ego as large as Crashman's!</font color=red>
 

jammydodger

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Sep 12, 2001
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($1k!! but still looks really good)
I fail to see the point in spending £1000 on a network hard disk enclosure, I mean surly you could just get a via CPU and motherboard a sff case for half that price? It would do the same job, be completly noiseless, wouldnt take up much space and would be cheaper!