Hi, hopefully someone on here has the insight i don’t.

I had a WD My Book My Live attached to my router, the drive was the home for all my music for my SONOS system. The drive connected via an ethernet cable to the back of sky router and meant i could access the files independently of my computer being on or off etc.

Last year these drives came under attack and I lost all my music (i was gutted but folk are dealing with far worse) – and I’m getting round to sorting a new drive. Despite being annoyed at WD I guess I was lazy to trust a 10 year old hard drive.

So my question is that I’ve now bought a WD Elements drive and want to use this in the very same way. But this drive only has a weird micro b connection, and my sky router only has an ethernet port.

How can I connect the drive to my network?

The My Book you used to use was meant for network storage, designed to plug into your router.
The Elements is a different product – it’s desktop storage, designed to plug into a computer.

The best way to recreate how you used to use it is to buy another network drive (“NAS” for Network Attached Storage). There are ways to get the desktop drive onto the network, but you’ll require a device to connect it to – some routers (but apparently not yours) will do this, otherwise a computer (or a little one like a raspberry pi). But you might not want the hassle.

Your drive only has a USB connection so it isn’t really meant for sharing on a network.
You probably could try a USB adaptor that will then allow you to attach a USB to Ethernet adaptor and then attach it to the router.
I might be wrong, but the firmware on the drive enclosure may not allow it to be used this way though.

Alternatively, attach the drive to something like a raspberry pi that would then act as a server on the network.

Edit: too slow!

You probably could try a USB adaptor that will then allow you to attach a USB to Ethernet adaptor and then attach it to the router.

that won’t work.

Alternatively, attach the drive to something like a raspberry pi that would then act as a server on the network.

you need to do something like this.

sky router only has an ethernet port.

they’re pretty shit. It wouldn’t do the port forwarding I needed to get a camera working.

So one alternative is to buy a better router. A router is basically a small computer – it’s got a processor/memory/operating system of sorts on it, so some of them have a load more functionality built in that the stuff you get for free with your internet provider. A lot of them have USB sockets and ‘media server’ software built into them so you can connect a disc drive of music and it will share it on your network.

Mine is a TP-link Archer VR600 Bizarrely my one has two USB ports on it, but they seem to have updated the model, kept the same model number and it now has a single (faster?) USB port and a different case. £80 on amazon. pretty sure I got mine as ‘almost new’ on Ebay for less

The old Apple Airport Wifi boxes used to have USB ports you could just plug a HD into and it would mount it as a network file server.

Plug it into a PC and share it from there. Or do what b33k34 said. Or buy a cheap NAS box and use the USB drive as a backup device so you won’t lose everything a second time over.

thank you all for your responses, very useful.

i think ill look at the router option.

Sky used to be utterly painful to get the broadband settings out of for a third party router. If memory serves getting them involved messing about with Wireshark which is never a great starting point.

Sky used to be utterly painful to get the broadband settings

I don’t remember it being hard at all but not sure whether it was google or I noticed that TPLink now have an app that does the setup and you just pick your provider.

Worth keeping your sky router handy as if you have trouble customer service will want you to put that back on to test it.