Making a External HHD into a NAS box?

Question

Is there anyway to make my 1TB external HHD into a NAS box for the other comps in my house? This also includes making vista and XP work together in a network which i have also been unable to do.c

Answer 1

You could use an old computer and run freeNAS on it.

As far as getting XP and Vista to play nicely, it depends on what problems you have.  (A Vista box can't easily access files on an XP box unless there's a passworded account on the XP box that the Vista box can "log in" as.)  Printing across the network should be no problem.

Answer 2

You could configure it as a Windows Network Share and assign permissions to it.  As the previous answer states, you'll need a local account on the machine it's attached to to access it.   I do not use Vista, so good best of luck there.