How to merge Shared folders?

I have multiple folders on my PC and attached drives, what or is there a good way of having like items shared as one folder.

For example…  D:\Bluray 01     E:\Bluray 02   F:\Bluray 03 shared as one folder to share called Bluray on the Hub.

I have been having a little play with symlinks, and I am guessing that is the way forward, what I would ideally like to do is share the Hub and its attached drives back to itself as well (may sound stupid, but I would like to have all Bluray/TV Sources) on one page. From what I have glossed over, sharing a mapped network drive is not possible.

Just looking for an exerienced answer, and hopefully some direction. Thanks.

Have you tried using the WDTV Live Hub media library to compile all of your available content? Check page 29 of the manual for more information.

http://www.wdc.com/wdproducts/library/UM/ENG/4779-705046.pdf#page=34

I’ve got some idea’s of how to do this on the PC side, but are OS dependant

Linux, you can use aufs or unionfs

and a nifty trick in ubuntu 13.04 to default kernel supports nfs export of merged directories

in windows there’s some advanced drive options for mounting, probably not exactly what you want

but example

parent folder - contains folder1 and folder2

folder1 and folder would represent actual drives mounted inside the parent folder

these would not be shortcuts, etc …

it would actually be hard mounted

ie you share out the parent folder only

and everything below it would be shared as well

besides there I think there’s some software that can do this in windows, like drive blender, etc …

edit. re-reading your post

if you’re talking about drives being shared by the hub

media library is your best bet

Playing with WDLXTV I did try some of this for a while

unionfs works, but dmaosd is very picky about where you mount things, and how they are mounted

linux symlinks also don’t work on ntfs or fat32 drives

but creating the symlinks would also require cmd line access,

I got a play list system to work once, but it had some draw backs as well

you have to log into network shares first

then go to local media where the playlist would be stored

but it did work without any cmd line access and since all your media is attached locally to wd hub, it might work

you’ll still be able to see the single folders, but you’ll have a merged playlist you can choose and browse

Ichigo

Of course.

Here is why that does not work.

  1. For some reason the Hub limits the amount of network shares you can put in the “My Media Library”. (11 seems to be the limit I found today)

2.If you count the Hub drive and two externals connected to it, you are stuck outside the Drive folder, so for having Bluray folders and TV folders it is of no use.

  1. For some unkown reason WD does not give you the option of creating a thumbnail for the drive, so the Hub and external drives look terrible and always have, unless you use a Linksheet for the Thumb Icon.

I have got round the issues in a way, by connecting the two drives that were connected to the Hub, to my ASUS N56U router, this means I can share the folders.

But as usual it is the community and workarounds that make the Hub the asset it is to so many of us, no thanks to WD.

KAD79

Thanks

I tried some a  while back, Windows wise, and they were not that great. I have just managed by moving files areound and using the USB ports on my router to give me more shares, rather than the silly restriction WD seems to have put on the connected drives.

One of my issues was that I wanted to share mapped networked drives i.e the ones connected to the Hub back to itself for common folders, like Bluray 01, 02 …TV 01,02 and the likes.

that was fast, post above was edited

also seeing new post

I was able to circumvent the 11 share limit for media library

but it does require WDLXTV cmd line access

and while ok, periodically dmaosd would overwrite my manual configuration

like maybe once every 2 or 3 days

of coarse once, I had saved the config file, redo it only took a few seconds, then a reboot

but still …

1 Like

Thanks again.

Thats a shame its not a permanent fix, maybe when the box is at the end of its life (couple of hours I feel) :slight_smile: WD might give out a firmware to let all you boffins make hard tweaks to make things a little better.

Not going to hold my breath though.