Desktop Computer Packages

How do I hook up an external hard drive usb to my old laptop computer ethernet connection?

I have an old IBM notebook with only an ethernet connection available. I have a My Book external hard drive full of music that connects via USB. How do I hook up the laptop ethernet to the external drive USB? I want to play the music on the external hard drive while hooked up to the old laptop. My computer experience is limited. Thanks.

Public Comments

1. You cant connect a hard drive with an ethernet connection. Ethernet connections are only for networking.
2. You can't. USB and Ethernet are two completely different technologies. You can use a USB port to connect to the ethernet using an adapter because USB was designed to be versatile. But you cannot do it the other way around. Your only option would be to go and buy a PCMCIA USB card and install it into your laptop. But even then, it is not a guaranteed fix.
3. A converter: http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/category/category_slc.asp?CatId=589
4. if you have another computer then try share the drive through normal shares heres a tutorial http://www.practicallynetworked.com/sharing/xp/filesharing.htm
5. the only way to do this would be the leave the external hard drive hooked up to a newer computer. you then want to right click on the drive and select to make this drive a shared drive. then you need to connect the laptop to the same network as the new computer and search for other coputers in the "my network places folder" you should be able to see the newer computer's shared folder and then inside should be all the files from th external hard drive.
6. You can't It needs to be hooked up via USB only