[scrivs9]

will a rj45 to usb lead allow me to put a external hard drive on my network so I can use it as a network drive.
like this one on ebay.

http://cgi.ebay.co.u...=item4aa09ba0d6

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nope. whatever is on the other end of that adapter has to be able to have an IP address assigned to it, and to be able to understand what's being communicated to it via the network.

if you were to put one of those on each end of a long ethernet cable, you'd basically just be sending USB transmissions over the ethernet cable instead of USB, but you couldn't hook it up to a router or a switch and expect it to work.

you could hook the external drive to a computer that's on the network, and share it in a workgroup as usual.

another option would be to get a NAS (Network Attached Storage) system, or a NAS enclosure for the drive that you've already got (unless you can't remove the drive from it's current USB cradle)

[dsenette]

nope. whatever is on the other end of that adapter has to be able to have an IP address assigned to it, and to be able to understand what's being communicated to it via the network.

if you were to put one of those on each end of a long ethernet cable, you'd basically just be sending USB transmissions over the ethernet cable instead of USB, but you couldn't hook it up to a router or a switch and expect it to work.

you could hook the external drive to a computer that's on the network, and share it in a workgroup as usual.

another option would be to get a NAS (Network Attached Storage) system, or a NAS enclosure for the drive that you've already got (unless you can't remove the drive from it's current USB cradle)