Network Hard Drive Question

[jonathanfee]

Hope this is the right forum.. sorta network related.
I want to put a hard drive on my home network to act as a backup / file sharing medium.

I bought a 160gb IDE HDD. I'm wondering if I can just buy one of those enclosures like This to make it an external USB drive. Then can I connect it to my router via a usb to ethernet connector (Something like this )?

Is it that simple??
What software would I need? What would I need to do to configure this?

Or am i better off just building up an old pc, stick the 160gb drive in there and connect that to network?
(i just dont want to have a whole pc running /sucking power just for a file server)

Any thoughts? suggestions? experiences?

TIA
Jonathan

 

[Fraggster]

hook it up to your computer and then share it over the network....


it can be hooked up to a router but its costly. i think linksys make something to do this.

 

[imported_rhfactor]

Linksys NSLU2. It goes for $79.99 at Amazon, last time I looked. You can do a lot with it. Go to tomsnetworking to learn more about it.