[spud159]

Ok, first let me explain - I'm on a budget, and you will need to type slowly for me to understand...

I have a 15" powerbook with an external Lacie hard drive - the external hard drive is now nearly full (which I use to archive high res photographs), so I need another, but I would rather have all the hard drives connected in one place and have the option of plugging in the Powerbook into the hard drives in different rooms.

Is there such thing as a socket that I can install in 2 or 3 rooms which will always be available to connect to the drives, enabling me to archive and work with the photos wherever I need to.

I have a old PC which I have connected via a Wireless network - I have tried to archive over the wireless network but this has proved not to be possible, and the size of the images means it can take a very long time

Any suggestions would be gratefully received

[tooki]

Networking via ethernet or wi-fi is probably your best bet. Anything coming close to what you want to do is going to cost far, far more than any individual could afford.

tooki

[turtle777]

So you want to make a FW homenetwork, so you can connect to your centrally stored FW drives from different rooms ?

Possible, yes. You'd need to get FW hubs and loads of FW cable, which is not exactly cheap.
I'd recommend a Ethernet-based network (if possible, GB Ethernet).
Unfortunately, I don't think there are any FW to Ethernet adapters yet.
(see http://forums.macrumors.com/archive/...-129178.html ), so you'd need a computer in-between to share those drives over the network.

Honestly, if you are on a budget, I'd just get one large external FW drive and carry it from room to room...

-t

[MacIntel]

Originally Posted by spud159

I have a old PC which I have connected via a Wireless network - I have tried to archive over the wireless network but this has proved not to be possible, and the size of the images means it can take a very long time

Any suggestions would be gratefully received

Like others say, ethernet would work best. Turn the old PC into a file server, and connect everything via ethernet.

That or the 'carry around an external' option like turtle777 says.

[ghporter]

Without too much effort (though it will take a little time) you can make the PC a Linux-based server and not have to worry about the problems in ol' Bill's little operating system.

For some reason, firewire networking has come up in this forum several times in the last couple of weeks. And so far nobody has either come up with a compelling reason for using FW over ethernet or with a compelling technique for making FW networking more attractive than ethernet. I really don't think it's going to happen-firewire is much better suited for streaming data over packet data.