Is there a WIFI hub that does this? What is it called?
 

Some external harddrives have WIFI. Is there a WIFI hub that I can plug in multiple external harddrives into?

WIFI
-> Western Digital HD 1
-> Western Digital HD 2
-> Western Digital HD 3

This way both my girlfriend and I can connect to HD 1,2 and 3 from my laptop and hers, from anywhere in the house.

Does this exist? What is that called so I can search for it?

they all do it but if you are interested in watching video or whatever wifi aint gonna cut it with HD get a gigabit switch and nas drives...they are cheap

Yes. The Apple Time Capsule does this.

http://www.apple.com/timecapsule/

It is a 802.11 N router that contains a 2TB or 3TB hard disk. It has USB 2.0 Ports to connected additional hard drives as well as 4 Ethernet Ports. It works with both PC's and Mac of course. They work really well.

Make sure that any shared drive is formatted with a shared filesystem or is exported via Samba or NFS. A bare ntfs or fat32 drive could be accessed by either one of you, but if you both try to access it at the same time the data will get trashed.

An old machine, even an old Pentium 133, can be used in that role, both making them accessible on the network and handling the sharing.

Thank you. The idea is that yes, I can attach an external harddrive and multiple people can connect, but then I can take the external with me...

It should also be pointed out that just because the laptop uses wifi doesn't mean the drives should.

Normally, the laptop will use wifi to connect to the NETWORK, through the router. The file server would more likely use a cable to connect to the network, through the router. Anything connected to the network can talk to anything else connected to the network.

If the storage can be in the same room as the router, or if fact if it status in the same place anywhere, it should probably use a cable. Only things that move around the building use wifi, with some exceptions for situations where running cable is isn't reasonable.

:thumbsup

We have something similar to this at my job
http://www.amazon.com/Iomega-StorCen.../ref=de_a_smtd

If you need a hub that holds multiple drives and can connect to the router via ethernet, look up nas storage on amazon or wherever you shop. That being said, for reasons stated above, I don't think you will find any setups like this that connect wirelessly to the router.

Best of luck

Edit: at first you said multiple drives but I just noticed you are referring to one drive now.
Maybe somenthig like this will be useful?
http://www.seagate.com/www/en-us/pro...FQyc7QoduTEpKQ

Ah yes. I would like to plug my HD into the router, then go to my laptop and access that HD.

NAS

Drobo is ftw