Hooking two computers together

Charlie McDonald · Post by **Charlie McDonald** » 6 Jul 2018 5:53 am

Can one hook up two laptops to draw from like an outboard hard drive? Something as simple as a USB cable, maybe.

Pete Bailey · Post by **Pete Bailey** » 6 Jul 2018 7:09 am

Charlie, if you have apple laptops you can hook them together and put one into "target mode" which allows it to appear as an external hard drive.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Target_Disk_Mode

If you are using pc it's not as simple but still possible in a few ways:

USB transfer cables are the most user friendly option, it's basically a double sided flash drive built into a cable. Typically they come with drivers that make the transfer process fairly easy. Pros: Simple. Relatively cheap. Not too hard to find. Cons: Slow (USB 2.0 ones are limited by USB and even pricier USB3.0 ones don't even get a fraction of the full USB speed), require proprietary drivers that not only work only on Windows and sometimes Mac, but may be limited to only certain versions of either OS. Do your homework before buying one.

LAN: If you have a lan just set up SAMBA sharing on one PC (That's normal Windows filesharing if on Windows) and access the file from the other computer. Done. As long as you have network discovery turned on you'll just see the other computer under network in file explorer. Pros: fast, and fairly easy. Cons: Requires both computers connected to same network.

Ethernet Direct-connect: If for whatever reason you cannot connect to the same network you can directly connect them via ethernet and configure network settings on both manually. This is a bit of work. There are guides online, but the option above is easier if you can just do that.

Wiz Feinberg · Post by **Wiz Feinberg** » 6 Jul 2018 7:17 am

Are you trying to use the same program on two computers, simultaneously? You have to install the program on both computers. You cannot just jumper a cable between them and have a master and slave. You can, however, network the two PCs and share files.

Another option for operating on two computers is to install remote access program on each, then log into one from the other. Whatever you do on the calling machine (Master) happens on the slave. Teamviewer is but one of these remote access program.

Professional versions of Windows include a remote control feature to call other PCs to slave them. Do you have Windows 7 or 10 Professional?

Charlie McDonald · Post by **Charlie McDonald** » 6 Jul 2018 7:46 am

I have Windows 10 Home. Both computers are Vaio w/ Win10.

Of course it's not necessary, just for convenient file sharing. I have a thumb drive.
Thank you, Pete, I see what you mean.

Wiz Feinberg · Post by **Wiz Feinberg** » 6 Jul 2018 8:10 am

There is such a thing as a crossover network cable that is used to connect two PCs via an Ethernet port. You can look into this in these Google search results.

Charlie McDonald · Post by **Charlie McDonald** » 6 Jul 2018 12:20 pm

Very cool. Thanks. (Gee, I hope it requires some 'hacking...')