I have a laptop running xubuntu, and a pc running xp.
I have an external hard drive that stores all of my media.
This hard drives remains docked to my pc.
I want to be able to acess that media from my laptop when
I am in my wireless network range. This includes media
is music and photo images. This appears to be a multi-facted
problem. Does anybody know what software to use on my laptop?
How do I let others access my files, not openly but private peer-to-peer?
Does anybody know how to use the XP and xubuntu software that would
achieve that?

please help!

Well my first question would be what file system is the external hard disk?

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Ubuntu 8.10

I'd recommend getting SAMBA/SMB stuff for the windows computer. There is no real support for unix based OS' in windows. I'm short on time now, will re-read this later, and concentrate on what it says.
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This user added the following:
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Okay, the better solution to your dilemma is to get the Linksys device that allows you to plug in the USB on your external Hard Drive to a network appliance, making it NAS (reachable by every user).
Linksys.com - Products/Wired/Network Storage/Storage Systems/NSLU2
Since Linux can read M$ file systems (especially fat32 which is typical of external devices), and windows can as well, this is the best route. it is then available to all users on your network even when your xp computer is turned off.

I'm assuming that your network uses at least one firewall at the router level. Without that security, you would open this up to users outside of your home network.

Now, once you have this device (mentioned earlier), you, in the windows pc's can then Map a network Drive and point it to the IP address of the external hard drive.
The steps for that vary with OS.

There are other routes, they would be a little more work to set security access, sharing, and turning on/installing software for multiple op system support (again windows refuses to natively support any OS but theirs, you even have to turn on the Netware support).