Serve up PC hard drive as USB mass storage
No.
If you use a normal cable, the hosts will both try to provide power over the usb cable causing a short with the end result ranging from fried usb ports to dead motherboards. You need to buy a special USB to USB transfer cable with a controller somewhere between the jacks.
The two better ways to approach this would be:
- Get an external enclosure for the hard drive (http://www.newegg.com)
- Share the drive as a network drive for other machines to use