Have a client who would like to have this type of drive added to his network
consisting of a laptop (which he uses to roam around the house with) and
wife's Dell Dimension system. Laptop running XP Pro and desktop is XP home.
He also has a Brother printer (Ethernet), a Canon inkjet (USB, connected to
desktop & shared), and a USB external HDD (connected to desktop & shared).
His desire is to get all his external components off the desktop so he
doesn't have to remember to turn it on before going to another part of the
house with his laptop and discovering it's off and he doesn't have access to
the inkjet or USB HDD. Also, laptop "looses" it's connection to the inkjet
periodically & don't know if this is related to the laptop or the inkjet
going into "snooze" mode as it does when not receiving a lot of print jobs
and  the share from the desktop fails to allow bi-directional communication
with the laptop. When it "looses" the printer you have to go back through
"Add Printer" to reestablish communications.

Have found Western Digital WDXE3200JBN 320GB Net Center External Hard Drive
(also a 160 G version of this model) that would appear to fit this need as
it's network ready with to USB ports available for attaching other USB HDDs
and printers to make them network accessible.

Have any of you used this drive (or other network HDDs) and can comment on
the usability for my client's needs? I understand they can be slower access
(for a 7200 rpm rated drive). I'm trying to understand if the "slow access"
is related to the user's expectations in relation to an internal drive or if
it's really painful to use in the network environment.  With current USB
drive, he does data backups from laptop (incremental - but not gigabytes of
data) and uses it to share files with the desktop.

Thank you

Jayne Johnston

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