Well, you’ve managed to get everything installed but you still can’t connect to the external drive. As I mentioned earlier, this device creates a small network in itself. Just like you’d map a networked resource, you have to format it to a set standard and then set up shares so you can access the storage space. And just like network shares, you simply set up folders and they change size automatically to accommodate the data being saved.
To do all this, you need only your browser. The above screenshot was taken while using Microsoft Internet Explorer, but I was able to also access the setup utility using Firefox, so you should be fine regardless of which browser you use.
From this screen you have a good many utilities that will handle the business of setting up your network storage. The Disk Utility option will allow you to format the drive in a FAT32 file system. Like many network shares, this one requires a FAT32 file system for maximum compatibility. From the menus you will also be able to set up the shared folders, change the default password to enter this area of the storage setup, and even password protect folders individually so you can secure data that you might not want everybody in the household knowing about. Once you have everything set up to your liking you simply go into you’re my Computer (or the Explorer browser if you’re old school like me) and map the network resources that you just set up. The shared folder(s) show up as network drives with the drive letters you assigned when you mapped the share.
In my testing, I used a WinXP based machine and attached it to a spare port in my switch, which also houses three networked machines. All machines easily accessed the shared resources and were able to connect to the administrative utilities as well. BYTECC has gone a long way into making this as simple as possible.
After the network shares were set up and mapped, the screenshot above shows you the available space from the network drive. Our test drive is a Western Digital 160GB JB model, so it takes only a glance to realize we have the space we were looking for readily available.
