Lacie D2 External Harddrive Question

[Emerson]

I am going to purchase a Lacie D2 external hardrive and I was wondering can I have it hooked up to me powerbook with firewire 400 and hooked up to me PC with USB at the same time? If so could I have both machines on and both see the drive, so I could quickly move files back and forth? I would like to use it as a central file location and for transferring date between the two machines. Before I get hammered I am an engineering student and I need the PC for solidworks and ProE etc.

 

[PlaceofDis]

im not 100% sure, but im inclined to say that no you cannot do this, only one computer at a time because of the read/write issues that would arise from having it connected to both, however if only one machine is on at a time then it could work, but both computers active, i dont think so

 

[daustin]

I want to say that you can do this, but I'm not 100% sure. At work they have three external HDs set up that appear as network drives...they're not attached to servers though. It's really werid and I don't know how they did it, but they are old (2 SCSI, 1 Firewire) LaCie drives and anyone can read and write to them at the same time you just take a major hit on performance. As in, it takes FOREVER to save or open a file!

 

[zach]

I'm almost certain the answer is no. If you want to do that, you'll need an ethernet disk, LaCie sells those too.

 

[aethier]

i have one and you cannot. even if you could, you would have trouble as there would be conflicting file systems (hfs+ os X, ntfs winxp) now tiger can read ntfs, but it cannot right, xp has no hfs support.. fat32 would be good, however it cannot read volumes larger then 80gb or something... plus what you want won't work anyhow unless you have an ethernet disk as someone mentioned..

 

[Sedulous]

Well, you could simply share the drive over the network. I have been using my Lacie D2 in this way for quite some time. This is especially true/useful if you have a fast network.