Windows 10 Home Group between Win 8, win 10 and Win 7

ussnorway

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• Nov 14, 2014

• #2

True… there are work arounds but it depends on what you want shared because windows is anal about which system is in charge of the network.

Simple option, get a router that allows usb drives (tp-link wdr4300) then put a 16 g usb stick into it and any windows can read/ write to the stick by default…. Ubuntu can also but that takes some extra mucking around.

 

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Jimbo22

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• Nov 14, 2014

• #3

ussnorway said:

Simple option, get a router that allows usb drives (tp-link wdr4300) then put a 16 g usb stick into it and any windows can read/ write to the stick by default

Click to expand...

Really, I had no idea....I'll be doing that for sure. Would that work for a USB HDD?

 

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davidhk129

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• Nov 14, 2014

• Thread Author
• #4

ussnorway said:

True… there are work arounds but it depends on what you want shared because windows is anal about which system is in charge of the network.

Simple option, get a router that allows usb drives (tp-link wdr4300) then put a 16 g usb stick into it and any windows can read/ write to the stick by default…. Ubuntu can also but that takes some extra mucking around.

Click to expand...

Thank you.

 

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ussnorway

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• Nov 14, 2014

• #5

bassfisher6522 said:

Really, I had no idea....I'll be doing that for sure. Would that work for a USB HDD?

Click to expand...

Yes most modern usb drive cases are windows share compatible now days, for example;

Work gave me a Toshiba 500g (canvio) drive… this drive is formatted as a ntsf and has its own usb3 cable.


Step 1; plug the usb cable into one of my two usb ports on the back of my Tp-link wdr4300 router and open the web browser to see that the drive is detected by the router.

Step 2; Decide how you want to share the files… for home windows use I recommend a mapped network as this is simple while still being safe i.e. you can just un-plug the drive to take to a m8's house without mucking up your file system and then it will reconnect when you plug it back in again.

Step 3; Open the map drive wizard… I'll use my windows 8.1 but it looks almost the same in any version of windows.


Step 4; Pick a drive letter for the mapped drive, I'll pick T for Toshiba and type \\####### (192.168.0.1 is the internal number for my router) then \%%%%% (name of the share as it appears in the router browser window)… tp-link routers name shares as volume 1, 2 etc but all routers work in a simular way and yes you can change the share name to work drive or something else but for simple setup this is fine.

Step 5; the drive is now seen by the router as an everyone permissions share and windows (in this example) sees it as the T drive.



Note 1, there are other ways to share a drive across windows machine but again I recommend mapping for any usb drive i.e. non-permanent because the other methods can get upset when the drive disappears.

Note 2, my tplink router is only a usb 2 port so that slows down the transfer of files to the hdd but if I un-plug it and connect it into a usb3 port at a m8's house then I would get the full speed again… personally I find the 16g stick ($20) is plenty for sharing music and photo between my home systems and my daughter would soon full up a 500g drive with junk but your needs may be different.

 

Last edited by a moderator: Apr 20, 2025

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Jimbo22

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• Nov 15, 2014

• #6

Way cool ussnorway! Thanks.

You might want to dress that up a bit and stick that in the tutorial section of the forum.....nice job.

 

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