Maybe sombody has tried this. When using a USB hub, is it possible to hook up one device to multiple computers? If so, can they all access the device at the same time. I don't mean at the same exact time, but rather contention based traffic. Like an ethernet connection.

The reason I ask is because I'm using Norton Ghost to be efficient. I can't seem to get the ghost executable to run when I boot with a network disk on these new Dell computers. The machines are using the new Intel Gigabit ethernet cards (Intel PRO/1000). At any rate, I can boot the PC, log on to the domain successfully, connect to the remote computer, and map the directory to a drive letter. I can navigate in the mapped drive, so I know I have a good connection. The minute I try to run the Ghost 2003 executable, the PC locks up! Maddening! It doesn't seem to matter if I run the executable from the mapped drive or a floppy. It locks up regardless. The executable runs fine if I boot without the network and protocol drivers.

Thus, my question. If I can use the external drive I store my images on with a hub to hook up to multiple PC's, I can get the same effect. Since hubs are rather meant for hooking multiple devices to one PC, I doubt it will work. I thought I would ask anyway. Any takers?

I'm not up on the exact specifics, but what I do remember of the USB specifcations seems pretty much locked to one computer on the bus. Your USB drive would expect to be given only one Device ID, wouldn't be able to deal with simultaneous requests from more than one machine, and from what I remember the root hub on your motherboard is locked to device ID 0, so if there was another root hub on the same network it would conflict.

In theory it would be possible to build a drive with multiple USB interfaces, but it would be expensive and highly specialised, I dont think anyone has built one of those. The idea dosent scale very well either, so I doubt it will happen.

You might be able to build/buy a USB data switch that would let you switch the drive between computers (maybe even remotely if you work at it) but I've never seen one.

EDIT] Did a brief search, most of them are manual switches, probably no use to you, but this:

http://www.datapro.net/products/UH-241.html

Looks like it could be useful. Only four machines though, you might be able to chain them.

[ 08-07-2003, 05:19 PM: Message edited by: andrewas ]

Thanks bud! I just found some documentation on how USB works. You're right, only one PC at a time. That messes up the whole efficiency idea for me. At least until I know why Ghost is giving me problems. I'll be attmepting it again soon with some old PC's that need to be wiped for donation. I'll be using a laptop and a hub to create a peer to peer network. The old machines don't have either USB ports, or CD-ROM's. So if I can't get the network booting to work, it will be a long time wiping the machines one by one! Hopefully, the new gigabit cards are causing the issue and it will work on the older machines.

I'm still interested in any ideas about Ghost. Anybody?

According to norton, ghost should work with a gigabit NIC, but its dependant on the manufacturers DOS drivers.

I don't know. Like I said, it's wierd. If I don't load NIC drivers, the Ghost executable runs fine. If I do, it locks up. The funny thing is, the drivers and protocols load up and function fine from the command prompt. I'm going to try and do the same thing on some older P133 machines to get them ready for donation. Hopefully, it works fine on those.