noone said you MUST to download them tho . <| sep |> Too late , education is already as privatized as it can get without being private school . <| sep |> So has anyone plugged in an external HDD to these things ? No . I would never do that , it is a massive security risk . Use dedicated equipment that you can better control access to . How does it work ? I likely mounts the disk to something like srvshare then uses samba to share srvshare as a SMBCIFS file system . How do computers on my network access the drive ? UNC path routernameoripsharename potentially with a dollar sign at the end if it is a hidden share that anyone who goes looking can easily see . Is it worth the effort ? No . If your budget is that small you are better off just creating a directory on one of your existing workstations and sharing that .