Optical Drive on network?

[nekrosoft13]

Is there an adapter or special enclosure to add optical drive directly to network, connect it directly to a switch?

I don't want to leave a computer on to share the drive.

 

[marshac]

almost any cheap router these days has a USB port for SMB shares.

 

[fastgeek]

Only thing my tired brain can think of right now is connecting it to the USB port of certain routers. Not sure if that's even an option for you though. Never done this... so YMMV.

 

[nekrosoft13]

Routers usually only work with certain hard drives but I can try that. I wanted to place this shared optical drive downstairs while router is upstairs.

 

[nekrosoft13]

anyone else?

was looking at devices like this... http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...&cm_re=nas+usb+adapter-_-33-973-005-_-Product

but from what I can gather none of them will work with optical drives.

 

[FnordMan]

anyone else?

was looking at devices like this... http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...&cm_re=nas+usb+adapter-_-33-973-005-_-Product

but from what I can gather none of them will work with optical drives.

You're probably not going to find any that work with an optical drive. They're rather special, best you could do is possibly share it out via iSCSI but that requires it be in a PC that's on all the time. (it's also a royal pain in the butt to get working, i've tried it a couple times and failed both times)

 

[nekrosoft13]

reason why I want to do this is to have one optical drive downstairs and one upstairs, that would be shared between all portable devices, if I want to install something ultrabook or tablet I just pop in the CD and do it wirelessly.

 

[drescherjm]

Don't these support mounting .iso files from a network share? At work the only time I use an optical drive is to make an iso.