[cyster15]

[I have all my movie files on an external HDD. Can this drive be mapped for media portal network share or am I fresh out of luck?

[Darre]

I've seen some people complaining this doesn't work. However I don't have any experience regarding this my self. Try to search for similar topics regarding this

[charli181]

I have had that working where my server had the external USB setup as a network share. On the CLient Side I mapped to to it and placed that drive letter in the MP Config. This worked well and was recognised everytime.

One problem I did have though was when there was more than one USB device connected and accessed. My setup was a webcam that was streaming the video across the network and a usb drive for my ripped DVD's (no compression). When both were working at the same time, the video's would stutter from time to time due to bandwith issues on the USB port. This may have been my setup only but it is "food for thought"

[cyster15]

The drive is recognized in mp the problem is when I enter mp and select my videos all I get is a blue screen no movies. Same for music and weather. The title of the page toggles between home and share continuously but no content. I have even created a database and downloaded the movie info but still can't see any movies. My plugins show sudoku and tetris but upon selecting either one I get a blue screen again. I've been at this for a week for a couple hours at a time with no fix. Now im getting frustrated. As I said 2.20 worked fine for me but upon a fresh install of windows now does not work. Active x is installed and I am usin an ati AIW 2006 edition video card I shouldn't have any problems should I. also Vista 32bit OS. Also if I am using a usb drive over a network does mp have to be installed on the pc that houses the usb drive. If so then that could be my problem. Not sure.

[charli181]

Originally Posted by cyster15

Also if I am using a usb drive over a network does mp have to be installed on the pc that houses the usb drive. If so then that could be my problem. Not sure.

FOr this question, No MP does not need to be loaded onto the machine the USB drive is connected to. I run both NAS devices and USB devices with NO MP loaded. This stuff all comes back to the network communications.

For the other errors you are having, it does not sound like the USB Device is causing this. I would strongly suggest attaching the logs so people can help in finding the cause for these errors. I have read else where about MP running in Vista with Administrator privilages only.

[VdR]

I have always used USB drive(s) (now 2x 500 GB) on a server connected through the LAN with the MP machine for pictures, music and video without a problem. There is one thing I learned though, and from reading the string above others might run into this.

Of course the USB drives must be set as shared on the server. When you access the drives from the MP machine by mapping the shared network drives there is a problem: When the MP machine is restarted the drives automatically reconnect, but when the server is restarted the drives do not automatically reconnect! When the drives are no longer connected you do not see the available media. The MP machine must be restarted as well (or the drives must be reconnected manually).

There is a better way.

Make the drives shared and access the drives on the server directly. In MP setup include the server in the path (e.g. \\w5520\shared media I\movies). Now the only requirement to access the files is that the server is actually running.

I use this setup to access the media from different MP machines on the network. I have also included the directory for recorded TV (residing on the living room MP machine HDD) as a video path on the other MP machines so I can watch recorded TV from there.

There is one big nuisance. I continuously develop the hardware, everytime I move a disk or video files the movie DB is useless. I just do not use it anymore.

VdR