Alright, guys, so today I wanted to mess around with sharing access to a USB drive on my Raspberry Pi. I’ve got this old Pi 3B+ lying around and figured, why not make it a little more useful?
First thing I did was plug the USB drive into the Pi. It’s just a regular flash drive, nothing fancy. My computer is a bit weird, sometimes it pops up with a window asking what I want to do with the drive, sometimes it doesn’t. If it does pop up, I just pick the “Open folder to view files” option. If it doesn’t, no biggie, I just open up the file explorer thingy and find the drive listed on the side. It’s usually got some random name, but it’s easy enough to spot.
Then, I needed to “mount” the drive. Sounds complicated, but it’s really not. I opened up the terminal on the Pi and typed in this command: sudo mount -o uid=pi,gid=pi /dev/sda1 /mnt/usb. Now, you might need to change the “/dev/sda1” part to match your drive, but this worked for me. Basically, this command tells the Pi to make the drive accessible in a folder called “usb” inside the “mnt” folder. And it does it in a way that my regular user “pi” can access it without any fuss.
So, mounting the drive is just the first step. To actually share it with other computers on my network, I decided to use something called Samba. It’s like a translator that lets different types of computers talk to each other and share files. The first thing I did with Samba was create a new folder. This is where the USB drive will appear on the network. I just used the terminal again and typed a command to make a new directory. I won’t bore you with the exact command, it’s easy to find online.
After that, I needed to figure out the unique ID of my USB drive. This is like its fingerprint. I used another terminal command to list all the storage devices connected to the Pi, and it showed me the UUID of my drive. I made sure to write that down.
Next, I had to mess with the Samba configuration file. You can find tutorials online for this part. Basically, you have to tell Samba where your shared folder is, what the UUID of the drive is, and who’s allowed to access it. I made it so that anyone on my network could access it, just to keep things simple for now.
After saving the changes to the config file, I restarted the Samba service. And boom! The USB drive showed up on my other computers. I could open it, copy files to and from it, everything you’d expect.
But wait, there’s more! I also found this cool app called FlexiHub that lets you share USB devices over the internet, not just your local network. It’s pretty neat. I signed up for a trial account, installed the app on my Pi, and followed their instructions. It was surprisingly easy to set up. Now, even when I’m not at home, I can still access my USB drive connected to my Raspberry Pi. Pretty sweet, right?
So, yeah, that’s how I turned my old Raspberry Pi into a little file-sharing server. It was a fun little project, and now I have an easy way to share files between my computers, and even access my USB drive when I’m away from home. If you have a Raspberry Pi lying around, I definitely recommend giving this a try!
- First, I plugged in my USB drive and mounted it using a simple terminal command.
- Then, I set up Samba to share the drive over my local network.
- Finally, I discovered FlexiHub, which lets me access the drive from anywhere!
Sharing USB Access on My Raspberry Pi Was Easier Than I Thought
This whole process was way easier than I thought it would be. I’m not a super techy person, but I was able to follow online tutorials and figure it out. It’s pretty cool what you can do with a Raspberry Pi and a little bit of know-how. Give it a shot, you might surprise yourself! It’s a good thing to spend time with your friends.