I read a while back on slashdot about someone that turned a computer into a firewire drive using a firewire card, I want to do something similar. I want to eather turn an old computer or a small mini-via system into a mass storage device accessed over usb or firewire. maybe also acting as a network server. anyone know what hardware/software is required? (since it is a combo of both I figured neather hardware nor software was the proper forum)

This rather depends on what you're trying to access it with.

Software: You'll need to run a networked filesystem server, such as nfsd (UNIXey) or Samba (Microsoftey).

Hardware: To make it appear as a USB mass storage device, you'll need to appear as a USB client node, not a host node. You won't be able to use your USB port for this, but you may get somewhere by e.g. rewiring your parallel port and writing a device-driver.

To make it appear as a networked storage device is much, much easier. Just set up a network…

Network server: What do you mean by a “network server”? To run a web-site, look at Samba.To run an email server, look at sendmail or qmail. To run a firewall, look at iptables. To run a freenet node, look at freenet. There are literally thousands of different servers you can run — but most common ones can be easily gotten up and running with your distro's setup tool.

Hope that helps,

— Robert J. Lee

I already know how to o a network server, my question is on the usb or firewire mass storage, I want other computers to see it as one when I plug a usb or firewire cable comming from somewhere on the storage computer into the system I want to access it.

I don't see the point of this? IF you want it as a USB storage device then you would be better with just a large external USB drive you could plug in any PC. If you want a server accesable to all, you would be better off networking it.

I already have 4 120gb hd's in a raid, but they generate to much heat to leave in my main system, I want ot put them in an old 1ghz I have. now I have done the networking filesystems and such in the past, but I have experianced problems being I do not restart the systems much at all, sessions expiring, and also network getting clogged by transferes (I use data on the 120's A LOT) I want firewire or usb2.0 to avoid these problems, and as far as I know there isn't a usb drive casing that takes 4 ata133 drives ina linux raid.

Run the fileserver on a separate network, have two network cards in your main box - go to gigabyte net cards Simple setup rather than playing with USB.

I don't know what you mean about network problems and sessions expiring. I run 24/7 fileservers here for various media and never really restart and have no trouble. Don't know what you mean?

I mean using lufs I think it is called, lets you mount ftp/scp-ssh as though they were native, I used ftp because no checking makes for faster speeds, eventually the session would expire, I experianced the same w/ ssh

I would be sharing with smb or nfs...

You could make the computer appear as a USB mass storage drive, but you will need to get your hands dirty and actually write a kernel module to drive the client side of the USB hardware, and build a cable that was USB at one end and some other suitable connector at the other (a low-level port like a parallel port where you can wiggle each of the bits independantly, not USB where you usually can't).

There's a host-side driver in the Linux kernel that you can follow to see the other side of the communication you need to deal with. It's not completely trivial, especially when you consider that you're only communicating one bit at a time (something 8/32-bit computers tend not to make too easy in software). You can also get details and tips on the mass storage drive spec' here: http://www2.one-eyed-alien.net/~mdharm/linux-usb/

That said, networked storage really is the easy option here. If you're having trouble with using FTP as a mounted filesystem, you could try another protocol. samba/SMB actually works quite well even in mixed-OS networks, and the UNIX NFS protocol was designed to be used for permanent networked storage so I'd imagine it might do what you're looking for. You certainly won't get any speed increase over a dedicated ethernet by using USB, which is serial and not exceptionally fast (but USB2 is probably comparable to hard-disk speeds I think).

If cost is an issue, you might consider buying/building a parallel cable and running a PLIP network.

Hope that helps,

— Robert J. Lee

it does help a bit yes, I am not afraid to get my hands dirty, I am a programmer, I could probably figure out how to write a kernel module given the correct tutorials. thank you.

Hi,

I run into this post by goggling and very interested with the idea. I can tell there're quite a few scenarios where the idea can be useful:
- Transfer data from PC to PC, one PC act as mass storage device
- Connect PC into PS3, if PC can act as mass storage device then PS3 can read media files with ease
- Connect PC to TV that has the capability to play media file from mass storage device

As rjlee said above, it might need to get dirty. But I think I have found something else by googling around. I wonder if these will help at all. One thing i found are:
- USB transfer cable which can be used as link mode or network mode to connect PC to PC, google about them you'll see some will need drivers/software which will both need to be installed in both PC. However, this particular one does not need to install any driver/software because the manufacter claim that they used a special chip inside the cable so the PC reconised them as drive: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CD5vv...eature=related. The price to get one USB transfer cable seems to be minimal.

My question is if using normal cable to make the PC act as mass storage device is too hard, whether by using the USB transfer cable to achieve the same thing would be any easier?

Please note that although the USB transfer cable is specificly used to transfer data between PCs but it still haven't achieved turning PC into mass storage device. Also PS3 and media playable TV should also support DLNA for media streaming but remember that USB provides better speed (at least 5 times faster than 100mbps LAN) for HD content media, and some media file cannot be stream, i.e. MKV.

Thanks for reading my post and hope I will get some reply. I am also a programmer so I can get dirty if needed.

Hi,

There were a couple of guys that wanted to get their hands dirty on this one ...
What happened? Didn`t worth the effort?
Please share if you managed to create a mass storage USB device from an old PC ...

120GB x4 = 480GB
500GB external drive costs like U.S. $80 - $120
Internal drive enclosures cost U.S. $15 - $40

I've seen enclosures that can hold 4 internals. With a fan, too.

The thing is, i`m keeping this old PC on the balcony .... A torrent server, apache with some webs, and other little stuff.
It will be great to access those torrent files via TV, or DVD, without the trouble of copying them on a memory stick or external HDD.