Connecting my usb hard drive to my wifi router via ethernet plug. Will the adapter do the job?

I have an external hard drive that only has a usb 3 port, I want to connect it to my wifi router which only has an ethernet port. Will one of the usb to ethernet adapters work for me? It’s primary purpose is to allow my wife and I to enable time machine wirelessly for our two macs, as well as load pictures etc off our computers to save space. The hard drive I have is a WD my book, 4TB. Thanks.

Hello Scott,

Our USB Ethernet adapters require additional software that has to be installed on a Windows PC, a Mac, or on a Linux PC using supported Linux kernel versions. Directly attaching the adapters to other devices is not supported.

Some Wi-Fi routers will have a USB port on them that allows for sharing out data from an attached USB hard drive as a network share.

Another option would be to keep the drive attached to a computer that is always on, then use shared folder features on the computer to share the drive over the network.

One final option would be to get a Network Attached Storage (NAS) device that have female USB ports for attaching your hard drive to. Most NAS systems will require having an internal hard drive to install their operating system to, and then you would be able to attach external USB hard drives to it once it has been fully configured.

I am sorry if this is not the answer you were hoping for, but I hope this helps.