n00b curious about setting up a home network

Luke

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Location
Milwaukee, WI USA
Name
Luke
I use 2 different computers both about half the time. I have a Windows based PC as my main office computer. But I often work on photos on my laptop in the living room while my wife watches her inane TV shows.

Currently all my photos live on the laptop hard drive and I occasionally back them up to a plug-in external hard drive. But I also would like to work on them from the office PC. I'm wondering if it would make sense (and be simple enough for a dummy like me) to set up a home network so that the photos can live on a hard drive connected to the office PC and be accessible to the laptop. I also think that I need to build some redundancy into the system since I am not very good about backing stuff up as I should be.

Anyone want to point me in the right direction? Are there any other questions I need to answer to get some good recommendations?
 
Do you have a router with wifi. If so, both computers could talk to the router and potentially to each other.

You can use windows network facility to make sure the computers see each other. You could use SyncBack to backup you desktop pix across the network onto your laptop.

You could also use "sneaker net" -- drop the photos you want to work on onto a thumb drive, bring the thumb drive to your laptop, work on them and bring them back.

PM me if you like.

Cheers, Jock
 
Thanks Jock. I do already have a wireless router and both computers access the internet wirelessly. Maybe I'm more than halfway there already.

I'm gonna poke around the computer and see if I can find this Windows network facility you speak of.
 
Thanks Jock. I do already have a wireless router and both computers access the internet wirelessly. Maybe I'm more than halfway there already.

I'm gonna poke around the computer and see if I can find this Windows network facility you speak of.[/QUOTE

Luke,

Assuming you have Windows 7, look under "Control Panel," then "Network and Sharing," then "Set up a new connection or network"

You may also need to set "Sharing permissions" for the folders where you keep your photos.

With two computers wirelessly accessing a router, you are indeed more than halfway there.

Cheers, Jock
 
^ can do that with a network hard drive in innuendoes(err... in windows) easily as well. Just plug it into the router via Ethernet port
 
in the mac world you could also have a hard drive either built in or accessible to your wireless router

Thats my solution. I have several external hard drives (yeah I know, get a NAS, too many power plugs) attached to a hub, attached to my computer. I can access anything on any of the drives from my netbook, but also from my ipad via an app called file browser which accesses the whole network. I sometimes have the hub connected to my AEBS but currently I'm just using the Billion modem/router for wifi, just no room to plug more in. And because I have all my drives formatted for mac use, the Billion cannot "see" them if I attach to that.
 
Network disks may indeed be a good solution. Dropbox another. That way you're also protected by their backup system.

The biggest issue might be to keep track of changes you make to photos. E.g. LR, PS and others store changes as commands rather than changes to the files themselves. So you may have to store the library on a network disk (or virtual dropbox disk) as well.

Good luck in finding the best solution!
 
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