You want an NAS, Network Attached Storage device. Loads of them about.
It becomes part of your network, you don't need a PC switched on for it to work.
thanks for that
is there any you could recommend either to buy/avoid ?
Another Apple Time Capsule here (got a bargain one at £100 recently) - great thing is the time capsule has a USB port on so you can add in extra external hard drives and for wireless printing too.
Auto backs up my Macbook without having to faff with wires. Loves it!
It's worth doing your research and deciding whether you want to mirror your disks for resilience - most people would not, people like me who work with servers in IT tend to be overly-paranoid so we do.
Wireless NAS are expensive, however cable connected start at just over £100 depending on capacity. For ready made ones Buffalo and Western Digital have good crits, LaCie are cheap but have a very poor reputation (which stopped me buying a 1TB one for just under £100 on iBood the other day).
If you do not want to cable it in to your router, then you can get a pair of power plug devices and use those to network - it's what I'll be doing as I want to place my NAS (once I get one) away from my PC and networking.
It's worth doing your research and deciding whether you want to mirror your disks for resilience - most people would not, people like me who work with servers in IT tend to be overly-paranoid so we do.
thanks for your reply
basically what i'm trying to do is use it as storage for my images i only have a laptop , hence the reason i want it to be wireless
do you think i've got the right idea or are there better options ?
will these only work with Macs ?
I think there is a bit of confusion of terms here.
The NAS as I described is plugged into a port on the router, but communication with the lap top is then wireless.
I'm assuming you use a landline for broadband within the home, so your router is already sat plugged into the mains and the phone system, you just stand the NAS next to it.
i dont recommend it for home users who want to use it as a single point of storage. in fact its a bad idea.
I think NAS with a USB drive plugged in the back is sufficient for gear failure, though in order to protect against house fires you need to keep a copy off site too. That can be another USB drive..
I ahve two Lacie NAS drives that I use. These are just plugged into my wireless router so are acessable from my laptop when ever I want.
They are good - never had any issues with them