Streaming music / modem

[the]

Has anyone ever heard of a way to hook an external HD up to a modem in such a way as to make the information on the HD available to anyone with access to the network? How is this done exactly?

Im thinking that I do not want to be running a separate computer (and essentially just sharing files between computers) while I am doing this because I dont want to waste too much electricity, although I have one at my disposal if I need it.

 

[Korg]

Do you want to stream the music? Or just have someone else be able to access your MP3 files directly?

 

[the]

I want everyone who can connect to my modem to be able to access the file. Im not trying to broadcast it in a P2P fashion. Basically me and my GF can access the drive.


So far I have found something called a NAS that might work.

 

[J. Cardigan]

There are routers that have a feature where you can plug an external hard drive into a USB port on the router and it allows sharing of whatever is on the drive. I haven't used any of them so I can't comment on that.

I used to have a FreeNAS setup (junk computer I had with FreeNAS installed) and it worked fine for awhile, but something either got screwed up on the bootloader or a partition table because it eventually stopped functioning. My Unix-fu was/is not good enough to fix so I just dismantled the thing and haven't set up anything like it since. It was also an enormous pain in the ass but really, really nice to have.

Long story short: if you are willing to part with $200-300+, get a NAS. If you have an external hard drive and want to just plug it up to something and make it work, get one of those routers I was mentioning. If you are really good with computers, sadistic, and possibly insane, try out FreeNAS or some derivative.

Edit: Hahahaha oh man am I late to this party.