How can I share a internal/external HDD from my laptop to my router?

kiicki · November 26, 2015

I use a laptop, since my internal HDD as limited space. I want to watch my movies from my TV on another PC that is connected to my WiFi.
I could easy connect an external HDD to my TV, PS4 or my laptop, but my TV and PS4 doesn't detect NTFS format. I also don't want to have a external HDD connected to my laptop all the time.

Since many of my devices doesn't detect NTFS format, I hooked my external HDD to my router. Everything works great. I can connect to my external HDD from any device I want, as long as I'm connected to my router.

Since I also have movies/TV-series on my laptop, I also want to hook up my internal HDD to my router, just as I did with my external HDD.
The difference is that my external HDD is hooked into my router, and my internal is not.

Previously I fixed this problem by installing a third party DLNA software such as "Plex"
I can share my content to Plex, and if I have a device that supports DLNA, I could watch my content.

But since I already use a external HDD with my router now, I want the same setup for my internal HDD. I don't prefer to use two methods, since I like things clean and simple.
Is it possible to share my content from my laptop to my router, and watch that content with other devices that is connected to my router?

If this works, Is there also a way to connect to my router when I'm not home, for example at a friends place? Can I connect to my router, and watch my content just like I can with "Plex"?

With Plex, it works as long as the other computer also have Plex, and you share you content to your friend. But since I use a external HDD also, that wouldn't be available to Plex, since it doesn't run over Plex but over my router.

braneopbru · November 27, 2015

Well, you could take the hard drive out of your laptop, put it in an external enclosure and plug it in to the router. Or you could just transfer the movies from your laptop to the external enclosure.

Or better yet, you could tell us which model router you have so we can give you real advice instead of useless, sarcastic remarks.

kiicki · November 27, 2015

Well, you could take the hard drive out of your laptop, put it in an external enclosure and plug it in to the router. Or you could just transfer the movies from your laptop to the external enclosure.

Or better yet, you could tell us which model router you have so we can give you real advice instead of useless, sarcastic remarks.

Yes I could copy my movies from my laptop to my external HDD, but I only have 1TB external HDD space, so I want to use my internal HDD in my laptop also.

I have D-link 868L router

braneopbru · November 27, 2015

The answer is complicated; I'll try to explain it as best as I can.

You have your external hard drive plugged in to your router; the router is running a DLNA server and allowing you to access the media that is stored on the external hard drive from your smart tv.

You want to have the router to "pull" the media files that are on your laptop's internal hard drive and serve them to your smart devices as well. That is impossible.

What you can do is install a DLNA server on your laptop as well and your devices would then access those media files that are on your laptop through your router. Keep in mind, this will obviously only work as long as your laptop is powered on and connected to wifi. As soon as your laptop is turned off, you can only access the files that are on the external hard drive. All this means is that when you turn on your smart tv, instead of seeing one DLNA server with all your movies, you would see two servers, one from the router and one from your computer. You also don't have to run Plex if all you want is a DLNA server. There are other options that are much smaller and more efficient. Just search google for DLNA servers

As far as accessing your files from outside the home. You can enable web access to your files in the router's settings and be able to view your files that are on your external hard drive from a web browser on any computer, anywhere in the world. Make sure that you understand what you are doing when you do this as you are potentially opening yourself up to attacks if your setup is not secure.

You can also download D-Link's app to your device and view your media on android and iOS devices. The iOS app can do airplay, so if you are at a friend's house and he has an apple tv, you could play a movie from your external hard onto his tv.

Now the complicated part: accessing files stored on your laptop's drive from outside the home. As far as I can tell, there is no way to do that without using different software and even more potential dangers. HOWEVER, If accessing all the shared files in the home is something that is extremelly important to you, you Might consider getting an Asus router.

Asus routers have the same DLNA features as your D-Link, as well as having a torrent client built right in, so you could have your router download your torrents right onto your USB drive. But the feature that you might be interested in is in the ASUS mobile app. When you use the Asus mobile app, both in the home and outside of the home, it will show you any shared folders on every computer in the house. This is not the same as a DLNA server. I'm talking about SMB shares. This is just shared folders on Windows. But it does allow sort of what you want to do.

The Asus app will show you the shared folders on your external hard drive and the shared folders on any other computer in the house. This sort of fulfills your original desire to share the content from your internal hard drive to your router and have files from both places accessible in a single location. But again, this ONLY works from the Asus app on Asus routers.

One last note - it might be possible that D-link's mobile app has this feature, but since I do not own a D-Link router, I can not verify whether or not it is capable of doing the same thing as the Asus app.

kiicki · November 27, 2015

The answer is complicated; I'll try to explain it as best as I can.

You have your external hard drive plugged in to your router; the router is running a DLNA server and allowing you to access the media that is stored on the external hard drive from your smart tv.

You want to have the router to "pull" the media files that are on your laptop's internal hard drive and serve them to your smart devices as well. That is impossible.

What you can do is install a DLNA server on your laptop as well and your devices would then access those media files that are on your laptop through your router. Keep in mind, this will obviously only work as long as your laptop is powered on and connected to wifi. As soon as your laptop is turned off, you can only access the files that are on the external hard drive. All this means is that when you turn on your smart tv, instead of seeing one DLNA server with all your movies, you would see two servers, one from the router and one from your computer. You also don't have to run Plex if all you want is a DLNA server. There are other options that are much smaller and more efficient. Just search google for DLNA servers

As far as accessing your files from outside the home. You can enable web access to your files in the router's settings and be able to view your files that are on your external hard drive from a web browser on any computer, anywhere in the world. Make sure that you understand what you are doing when you do this as you are potentially opening yourself up to attacks if your setup is not secure.

You can also download D-Link's app to your device and view your media on android and iOS devices. The iOS app can do airplay, so if you are at a friend's house and he has an apple tv, you could play a movie from your external hard onto his tv.

Now the complicated part: accessing files stored on your laptop's drive from outside the home. As far as I can tell, there is no way to do that without using different software and even more potential dangers. HOWEVER, If accessing all the shared files in the home is something that is extremelly important to you, you Might consider getting an Asus router.

Asus routers have the same DLNA features as your D-Link, as well as having a torrent client built right in, so you could have your router download your torrents right onto your USB drive. But the feature that you might be interested in is in the ASUS mobile app. When you use the Asus mobile app, both in the home and outside of the home, it will show you any shared folders on every computer in the house. This is not the same as a DLNA server. I'm talking about SMB shares. This is just shared folders on Windows. But it does allow sort of what you want to do.

The Asus app will show you the shared folders on your external hard drive and the shared folders on any other computer in the house. This sort of fulfills your original desire to share the content from your internal hard drive to your router and have files from both places accessible in a single location. But again, this ONLY works from the Asus app on Asus routers.

One last note - it might be possible that D-link's mobile app has this feature, but since I do not own a D-Link router, I can not verify whether or not it is capable of doing the same thing as the Asus app.

Thanks for your answer, but I don't think I need a Asus router so I can download torrent files into my external HDD that is hooked up to my router, if that is what you mean. I already can do that.

The way I can do that is to MAP my external HDD to my laptop. Then when it's MAPPED, I can use uTorrent, and simply download content to my external HDD.

I did find a solution so DLNA works great. But DLNA is not the only thing I need. I want to access all my drives like ha the local C disk on your drive. So I can see all my folder, and easily edit it.

That's not something you can do with DLNA, since from a PC, you can only open DLNA folder with "Windows media player" if I'm not mistaken.

I can use a DLNA to easily access the content, but what I want is to use a PC and access my drives, like it's a normal HDD, with all the folder, and the option to edit things.

So this is how I fixed so DLNA works. There are two ways.

Option 1: Enable DLNA in you router settings.

Pros: The DLNA content will always work as long as the router is on.

Cons: Only the external HDD that is connected to the router is shared now in DLNA. (My internal HDD from my laptop is not, which makes sense)

Option 2:

MAP external HDD that is connected to your router. Then launch Plex media server. Since Plex can add multiple folder to one movie file, this is the best way if you want share you external HDD and your internal HDD. I clicked movie in plex. Then added my movie folder from my laptop, then I added another folder from my movie folder in my external HDD. This is possible now, because i mapped it.

Pros: You internal and external HDD is now shared with DLNA.

Cons: Your laptop has to be on all the time, unlike option 1 where only your router needs to be on.

So this is how i do DLNA, but it's not exactly what I want.

I want to access my folder like it's just another HDD: I can easily do that with mapping, but what if I'm on another computer? Do I need to map again?

Isn't it possible to share it, so people on my network don't need to map it?

I find it weird that it's not possible to share the mapped folder.

When I go to my explorer, and type in "192.168.0.1" then external HDD pops up, and my "192.168.0.1" folder is in the network folder in explorer.

I close the explorer and open it up again, and it's removed from my network list, and I have to type in "192.168.0.1" again for some reason.

Why can't that folder be viewed all the time? So people don't need to type in that all the time?

For me it's not a problem, but there are people in the house, that wants access to it as a normal HDD, without going to much tech by typing in "192.168.0.1" all the time.

Again, I have no problem setting up DLNA, I only have a problem to access the external HDD as just another HDD that I have on my computer without actually typing in "192.168.0.1" every time or mapping it. I have no idea why it disappears when I close explorer.

I just want to share that external HDD over my network like it's just another HDD: