I go to school 200 miles away from home and want to have a backup HD at home, Which I can access remotely from school. I run XP and am trying to avoid having a computer at home just to access the HD. If a computer is nessesary, how to set it up for me to login. I will be buying a external which can be attatched Via USB AND attatched to my home network via ethernet/cat 5 cable
The difficulty you’re going to have is a question of security. The network file format used for Windows network shares is notoriously insecure and so simply connecting your Network Hard-drive to a broadband modem is a recipe for disaster. Your best bet would be to leave a computer running at home and then set it up so it’s an FTP or SFTP server of some sort and transfer files that way. Otherwise you’d have to look at setting up some sort of VPN. Since you’re at school, I’d recommend one based on TCP/IP connections like OpenVPN, but that will add another level of configuration and complexity.