Media Streamer and External usb hard drive and wl500g router.

[wraith36]

hi all.
hope you all in good health.

is it possable to run an os on a external hard drive when plugged into the usb port on the wl500g router.

i ask this because i have not had much luck getting into this drive from out side the router of another pc else were not being in my home.

plus can i assign a none nas based usb hard drive an ip in some way using software or something else to do the same thing.

i bought a media streamer thinking things would work without my pc running for it to stream through the router and pick up the media on the usb hard drive.
the media streamer is a linksys kiss 1600 which has ethernet plus wireless.

i dont want to have a hard disk plugged into it to the streamer when it can pick up the media using ethernet or wireless. ethernet being the best choice purely for its speed and less chance of data loss.

i hope i can us an os or something to sort this out untill i can bye a nas drive.
please help me if you can before i end up in a round padded room.

p.s im trying to learn this as i go along.

[EdP]

Personally, I don't know what can and cannot be done with your streamer. If it is similar to a Popcorn Hour for example, then yes, you can have it show movies with or without a pc running. If it has either internal or external storage, that is.

As for your NAS question, NAS stands for Network Attached Storage, which means that it has a network interface. A regular external drive obviously doesn't. You could however attach a regular USB drive to your WL500g and make the connection from there. It depends on what your Linksys supports as to remote connections ([Samba] file share, NFS, ftp, ...).

[wraith36]

Thanks for the reply Edp.

Can i give a hard drive an ip address then.
Either using software or any other method.
If so how and what do i need to use.

And can i use some software to run inside the hard drive while its connected to the asus router.

The router has samba - nfs - ftp.
Im not sure what to do with the samba side to it though.

But i think for the media streamer it needs to see an ip on my external hard drive which may be the problem.

I need a nas drive for sure.

Any way if any one has any words of wisdom im all ears.

[EdP]

Again, a drive by itself cannot have an IP address assigned to it.
When the drive is connected to your router, it does have an IP address associated with it: the router's IP address.

Also, a harddrive is not a computer, but while connected to the Asus, you could have the router run programs off it, although I'm almost certain that is not what you are looking for, because it can only run packages especially built for the router and it requires a lot of reading manuals and tutorials.

In other words: USB connected to Asus is sort of a NAS.
Perhaps you should read the user manual.