USB External drive

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I just ordered an external USB hard drive by Western Digital. Will this drive be able to be accessed by other computers on my LAN?
Will I need to take any steps to make that happen if it is possible?
Thank you.
2 XP computers, 3 Vista home premium computers.

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Will I need to take any steps to make that happen if it is possible?

I have two USB drives. All you should need to do is SHARE the drive as per usual procedures.

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Thank you Al. I was hoping that would be the case.

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Depending upon the model you purchased, some drives have various options for connection to your PC / network.

You might be lucky, and have an ethernet port on the back of the device. In this case, all you would need is an available port on your switch, and a way to assign an IP address to the drive.

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Shouldn’t be necessary, Chris. As I said, I have two USB externals and have shared them both. They are visible and accessible on my local LAN.

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I have shared them, BUT be aware that when the computer that they are connected to is restarted, the share may be lost as the new USB connection may not use the same drive letter.

DaveA I am so far behind, I think I am First
Genealogy....confusing the dead and annoying the living

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I set the drive up, reformatted to NTFS, and set for sharing. I can access the drive from all the other computers and haven’t had an issue with rebooting. I’m very pleased with it.
Thanks for all your answers.

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