Am I making life harder on myself? Using USB inputs instead of Internet?

Hi guys,

So I have the Wd Live (not the latest one that just came out). I connect 2 4tb hard drives to this device and a USB stick. I download content on hard drives, disconnect them from computer and then bring them to the player and connect. So lot’s of manual movement.

Someone said I can avoid this by setting up some sort of home network and have this device see my computer drives and thus work faster, not take time to load hard drives every time I disconnect and connect them back.

Any info?

thank you

Welcome to the Community.

This is possible by enabling network shares on your system. Please visit the following link for additional information:

http://wdc.custhelp.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/3787/

Home network seem intimidating, but they can be fairly easy under the right circumstances.

The easiest way is if you have access to something called a NAS (network attached storage).  WD makes them, as do many many other manufacturers.  Some of them are just hard drives sold that way already (that’s mainly what WD would be selling), and some are kits you can hook an existing USB drive you already have to and viola, it’s a network drive (just search “USB to NAS” on ebay, Amazon & google and you’ll find lots of info on this second option).

 It’s easiest because if you already have a wifi router, then you already HAVE a home network, and a NAS just becomes like another device on that network.  Your router will usually have extra ethernet ports on it you aren’t using (these days people usually just use the wifi and ignore the ethernet ports) and you simply hook the NAS up to one of those.

The alternative is hooking the USB storage up to one of your PCs, and making that “share” open to the rest of the network, but that’s a bother because it means you always have to leave the computer turned on (whereas a NAS being left on constantly is no big deal because they don’t draw much power, put out much heat or make that much noise).  If you DO tend to leave you PC on (and not in some kind of sleep mode) then I suppose this is the simplest way to go.

There are also SOME wifi routers that ALREADY come with the option to hook a USB hard drive to them.  It’s not the case by default though, so you’d have to be lucky for that to be the case with yours (suggested google search term: “wifi router with usb port for hard disk”).

It’s my memory though that ANY USB option of any kind is comparitively slow. So these 4TB drives are USB?  Ouch.  But at that capacity I bet they are USB v. 3, not the even slower USB v 2 or v1.  And I’m pretty sure the USB port on the WD is NOT USB 3. So that’s already a bottleneck.  Some of the USB to NAS solutions may work at USB 3 speed, and if so that’s a possible benefit there.

Just as a single example of many options I found searching for a minute or two, for example, here’s a router upgrade you could buy that allows USB 3 external hard drives to be hooked up to it and used as network storage.

http://www.netgear.com/home/products/networking/wifi-routers/R6250.aspx

Or getting back to WD, I notice their MyCloud product would work too.  It’s a kind of NAS with its own hard drive (they seem to sell it with different built in capacities) but it ALSO has a USB 3 port on it to allow you to hook those existing drives you have up to it as well. Not sure if you’re supposed to Wifi to this MyCloud or have it hooked up via ethernet cable to your router though.

http://www.wdc.com/en/products/products2.aspx?id=1140#Tab2

1 Like

Very nice reply, WileyCoyote

JFI I have been using my WD TV SMP for years but had a lot of problems when I changed to a Netgear R8000 router.

Nothing else changed but the router and I lost my “Shares”.  Tried everything…  Then tried mike27oct’s “Sticky” and “Turned off Protected Sharing” and ALL came good   :smiley: