Networked external HDD attached to router

[Isitme]

Have you tried this - Plug it into the PC using the USB, look in Control Panel>Network. If it appears there right click it and open the Properties. Look there for a way to disable the DHCP and give it a fixed address, say 192.168.0.254.

If it does not appear using the USB, try plugging it into the PC using ethernet.

[malc-c]

Originally Posted by Viffer8

I hope I have understood what you mean.

I logged on to the router and unticked the "Use router as DHCP server] in LAN IP set up section. I clicked [Apply] and it made no difference. i.e. I still got the same erro message

I then rebooted the router and that made no difference either

Err not quite. I was refering to the Controller for the network disk.

I purchased a disk enclousre (not from maplin) and installed a 160GB IDE drive. The enclosure has an embedded interface that can be accessed in much the same way as you access your sky router. Its in this control pannel that you need to disable DHCP NOT the sky router. This is assuming that your enclosure supports the same functions as mine does, so its worth checking the little leaflet that came with the enclosure

On my network - I disabled DHCP in the sky router and then configured each PC (I have 4 in the house to save arguments with the kids ) to use a static IP - I then did the same in my NAS (hence the 192.168.0.105 you see in the screen capture).

The problem I had was that by default the enclosure enabled its own DHCP contoller which provided a different LAN address, so it didn't appear on the same network to the PC's, and confused the hell out of the PC's when they tried renewing their IP addresses - using static IP addressing resolved this ( once I figured out how to disable the controller in the NAS drive

[Viffer8]

Originally Posted by Isitme

Have you tried this - Plug it into the PC using the USB, look in Control Panel>Network. If it appears there right click it and open the Properties. Look there for a way to disable the DHCP and give it a fixed address, say 192.168.0.254.

If it does not appear using the USB, try plugging it into the PC using ethernet.

Found the MAC address for it and configured the router to give it a specific IP address in the range. Also set it to give the desktop PC a different fixed IP to avoid a conflict. That didnae work either

Solution ..... took the fecker back to the shop and got a refund.

Thanks for the suggestion though

[malc-c]

Originally Posted by Viffer8

Solution ..... took the fecker back to the shop and got a refund.

Thanks for the suggestion though

You gave up too soon...

Assuming you get another, who'sto say you won't have a similar issue if that too has a built in DHCP controller

Hopefully if you still opt for a NAS drive, it will be plug and play

[Ned Ludd]

Not knowing the Sky router I don't know if this is significant.
BT routers all have USB ports. Attaching an external drive to them requires that the drive be formatted FAT32!

[malc-c]

Geoff, its the same with the NAS drive I have. The control panel has the option to format the drive without the need to format the drive in a PC first.

[Ned Ludd]

Yup Malcom! Over at the BT Home Hub forum you'd be amazed at the number of folk that have formatted their external drive to NTFS and then find that the Home Hub can't find it! In fact, it wont find ANY drive until, and unless, it IS formatted FAT32.
But, I'm not on Sky BB yet (due in about 14 days) so have no experience of their routers so I thought I'd just chuck that one in.

Me, I use a Netgear SC101 SAN jobbie with 2 internal IDE drives!

[malc-c]

It's interesting to hear that the BT router has a USB port, so I guess its like a print server / shared device.

Its a shame the original poster returned his drive, it would of been nice if we could of resolved his issue as maybe this could of helped others in the future.