Home Network / Sharing External Hard Drive

[Robjv1]

I'm acclimating myself to understanding how networking works and all and usually I can figure it out with Google as my trusty sidekick, but this area has me stumped.

What I have thus far:

Three computers in a workgroup (one computer is a wired connection, the other two are wireless and all of them connect through my Netgear FW114P router) with the same name. I can go to my network places and view my workgroup computers and see that all of the computers are present.

A 500GB external HD plugged into the USB port of my computer (is not a "network" drive natively, just a mass storage device).

Windows XP Media Center 2005 edition on each computer.

What I want to do:

Have each computer in my workgroup independently have access to:

- One shared area on the hard drive that anyone in my workgroup can dump files into and retrieve data from.

- Individual areas each with some level of encryption or password protection, that are basically accessible to just certain members on the workgroup (i.e. dave can access dave's section of space on the mass storage device but nobody else can.)

I'm not sure if I'm approaching this from the correct perspective -- I started out just trying to figure out how to do it with the simple file sharing in windows and started to think that might be the wrong route.

I've wondered if this is geting into running a computer as a server for the others kind of territory versus how I've approached it thus far and if that's the case if anyone could point me in the right direction, I would appreciate it.

I've heard Comcast (my internet provider) isn't so friendly with running a server on a home network, so I don't know if that's a possibility or not.

I figure I'm going to need some additional software and that the file sharing capabilities Windows aren't going to cut it for what I want. I'd also like to run it as secure as posssible.

I think if it's possibly through Windows File sharing that maybe the permissions section is where I'm getting hung up, but I honestly have no idea where even to start or if it's possible within that setup.

*whew*

All replies are appreciated,
Robbie

[cjessee]

Not sure that XP media center was built to work like that... (I may be wrong) but what I think you are looking for is a domain controller or XP Pro, something with some advanced security settings. A domain would be ideal for this situation but I am sure there are other ways around it. The downside: to have a domain...you need Server. Don't let me burst your bubble yet though, there still may be a backward way to do it... but I am afraid that does involve file sharing.

[TheMatt]

The features you require are only avalible in XP Pro. Your only option is to download encryption software like AxCrypt and create seprate folders on the networked USB hard drive, then install AxCrypt on each remote workstation and allow the users to encrypt their private files. If possible, format the USB drive as NTFS.

AxCrypt is free open source software and can be found at http://axcrypt.axantum.com/