# Mac and Windows sharing a USB drive in place of a network?



## riddle (Jun 4, 2007)

Is there such a thing as a flash drive wih *two* USB ports so two computers can share it simultaneously?

Background: I've just taken a job in a shop that not only won't let me put my MacBook on the LAN, but insists that I use a crippled Windows box on which I can't install software.  Period.

So I intend to bring in my Mac anyway and use it with the public wireless network for the bulk of my work, while using their Windows box only for printing and other essential LAN-based tasks.

Naturally I need a painless way to transfer files between the Mac and the Windows PC.  I'm accustomed to moving a thumb drive back and forth between computers, so the thought occurred to me: why not hook a USB drive up to both computers at once and save the plugging and unplugging?  (For extra credit, I wonder if a dual-USB device could also share a copy/paste clipboard between two computers?)

Perhaps I'm being naive -- sharing a drive without going through a networking layer may just be a good way to corrupt your data.  If so, what sorts of WAN- or Web-based options are there when I have only very limited admin privileges on the PC?

Thanks.


----------



## Decade (Jun 6, 2007)

Short story: No.

Even if the drive could support being connected to 2 computers (which some drives actually do support, but only Firewire drives), the software would corrupt the data unless you use a SAN cluster file system.

Another technique I noticed is to get a cheap transfer switch, such as what would be used to share a printer between 2 computers. Just unmount, flick the switch, and use the drive on the other computer. Try not to forget to unmount before flicking the switch.

I don't see how WAN-based solutions would help if you're not connected to a network. However, if the MacBook is attached to the Internet, I suppose you could use something like Personal Web Sharing (Sharing control panel), maybe with something like DynDNS to make finding it from the PC easier.


----------



## riddle (Jun 6, 2007)

Thanks, Decade.

In my (limited) Windows experience, the bottleneck is the unmounting: in Mac OS X, ejecting a drive requires one click and happens immediately; in Windows it seems to be a multi-click operation and then requires a wait longer than the time needed to physically move a thumb drive.

To provide more background: my laptop *is* on a network, just not the LAN.  This is a university setting where there is both public and restricted WiFi available.  So far the only thing I've identified on the LAN that I can't live without is the printers.  If that proves to be the case I may just bring in a desktop printer and tell them to take their crippled Windows box away.

Meanwhile, I see your point that any shared storage device needs some sort of locking mechanism.  What about Bluetooth?  Could I maybe put a USB Bluetooth device on the PC that allows it to see a shared folder on my Mac?  (Although doing so would probably require driver installation privileges. :-( )

Finally, failing all of the above, what's the most seamless drag-and-drop WAN-based solution?  SSH/SCP?  SFTP?   Anybody have a favorite client?


----------



## icemanjc (Jun 6, 2007)

Decade said:


> Short story: No.
> 
> Even if the drive could support being connected to 2 computers (which some drives actually do support, but only Firewire drives), the software would corrupt the data unless you use a SAN cluster file system.
> 
> ...


Actually I've tried to connect firewire cables from the drive to two macs and it just freezes.


----------



## CharlieJ (Jun 7, 2007)

Im sure you can do this. I have a USB External harddrive. (with the same port as the PSP) and this has two leads coming off of it so I can plug it in to two machines 
Check places like ebay.


----------



## fryke (Jun 7, 2007)

The question is not whether it's _physically_ possible to connect a harddrive to two computers at the same time. The question is whether both machines can mount it at the same time, read and write to it without logical problems. And I think that no, that's not the case with USB in general.


----------



## riddle (Jun 7, 2007)

Well, duh, it occurs to me that there's a straightforward WAN solution: all I need to do is publish a folder from my Mac so it's readable from the IP address of the office LAN.  Since for printing purposes the Windows doorstop only needs to be able to read it, not write to it, the security exposure is limited and the protocol could even be HTTP.  

I *still* think the world needs my clipboard sharing idea, though.


----------

