Hard drive enclosures / WD Media player Hub

WD Legacy Products WD TV Live Streaming
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I have googled several different key words and not come up with any recent clear answers.

I have come accross a few discussions from this forum and thought I would sign up and hopefully get some current info on whether or not things have changed, as I know it is something that people like me would love to know, unfortunately am still unsure if things are still the same matter. I do apologize for this maybe being a repeating question / discussion,

Okay, so here it is.

Anyone know about Hard drive enclosures and whether or not media players support them. As far as I have read, it can only be done if the drives are formatted into being read as one volume via USB, which isn’t ideal (as if you need to remove one or have different HD’s for different media, it isn’t fitting - Might as well just have 1 4T or so)… OR if they are plugged into a PC and accessed via Ethernet, such as also the NAS type arrangements also, which is fine, but not something I am after either (I like the idea of plug and play if I was just to bring my media player and enclosure to a mates etc).

EDIT: Okay, I am doing some searching within the forum as of now, so do really apologize if it has been covered and solved. If anyone could link me that would be awesome too! :smiley:

So ultimately, I wanna be able to build up an enclosure of say, 4 x 2TB hard drives or 2 x 2TB hard drives that can be access over 1 USB port of the media player, read as separate drives. Pretty much that is it. I have looked up certain enclosures but was told that it could only be done from being one volume.

Any help would be greatly appreciated, I love my music, and my movies, and it would be great to have my collections all at my fingertips.

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As of yet, I can only find this that relates to hopefully answering my question with the 2nd to last post. 
http://community.wd.com/t5/WD-TV-Live-SMP-Discussions/SMP-and-JBOD/m-p/578961/highlight/true#M22095

Any other makes/models which does it? I am not assured with only one person vouching for this though :S.

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Any help would be greatly appreciated, I love my music, and my movies, and it would be great to have my collections all at my fingertips.

Seems if I was going to do something like this, I would not connect it to my WD unit, but rather to my network so all devices have access to the shared drives.  I have drives scattered within my network I can access if I want to.  I have 4TB (in two drives) connected to my WD, and that’s plenty for me, but then I am not a torrent guy who collects stuff.

Another important consideration for me – since the WD unit is on 24/7 but not USED 24/7,  I have drives attached that have a sleep/idle function, and they stop spinning five minutes after they were last used, waiting for the next time they are called upon to serve stuff up.  Not sure an enclosure would have this function.  Bare drives I have put in enclosures sure don’t have a sleep function.

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The thing is, I am backing up blu rays as opposed to torrented files. So that being said, my files range from 4-10gig for a blu ray thats encoded to my specs as oppsed to 2gig roughly a file that doesn’t have HD DTS etc, so I if I average 5 gig a movie, that’s 400 movies on a 2TB hard drive. If each hard drive was 4TB that would suit my needs better as opposed to an enclosure then I guess, but as far as I know, the Media player only supports hard drives of up to 2TB, correct? I was just thinking if it was possible to use an enclsure and say use 2 of the 4 drives at a time and have a quick switch of some sort to switch between drives.

This is beyond me in regards to technical stuff, but my research so far tells me, The WD media players can support up to 2 x 2TB hard drives. totalling 4TB, and if the drives were accessed through the network, it is limitless, which I guess is fine, only that I would prefer an alternative solution if there was one, because streaming through your network limits a few things that come to mind.

1 - Souce of media being encoded to the right specs to be streamed correctly, which in my case, I might have been encoding them slightly above the max (unsure on this atm).

2 - Traffic flow and intermittent problems that come with streaming.

3 - It’s not then plug and play, if I was to just pop around to a mates and bring my hard drives and media player with me (I quite like the idea of this as being limited to just my own home)

I do like the idea of just 2 external harddrives that plug in each usb port (there is 2 right?) but the only downfall is the 2TB limit on each port. That is the case isn’t it? Hopefully WD do release firmware updates where it supports drives past 2TB.

Thanks for your time and input though, I appreciate it, if you have anything more worth informing me of, be sure to share it.

EDIT: After looking up the specs of the media players, they only have 1 USB port? Why do they have to make it that much harder by not supporting anything more than 2TB.
Now looking at this link it seems that the devices AREEEE capable of plugging in devices over 2TB.
http://wdc.custhelp.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/5875

AND…

http://community.wd.com/t5/WD-TV-Live-Streaming-Firmware/What-is-the-maximum-size-HD-that-is-supported-or-has-worked-for/td-p/551468

I am officially confused. Soo sooo confused. It appears they do support over 2 TB with latest firmware, and you can use powered USB hubs, which would be perfect in my scenario.

Just reassurance is all I need to go out and trial this and buy what I need. Anyone else done this themselves?

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In another recent thread of similar topic, one of the resident experts here said the WD players can support drives as high as 4TB.  If you want all this HD capacity, WD make units with 4TB, like the new My Cloud, or the My Book Live.  Both are connected via a network vs a USB cable to the WD.  I have a good home network, but I still find that direct connect via USB works best in all cases.  Suggest you keep doing the research you are doing.  Lots to find out still.

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If you are really looking for flexible storage options, the a NAS or a FileServer gives you that compared to drives connected via USB. As Mike noted, 4TB drives seem to work directly connected to the HUB, and his preference in for that type of connection. I take the opposite stance. With a network connection of NAS or FIleServer, there are no limitations to drive volume size, and dependent on hardware/software you are using, you can add drive space to volumes as necessary. I have not has any issues streaming via my network (wired of course) and a lot of this just comes down to personal preference. I like having 10-12TB volumes  that I can easily add more disks as necessary. Never running out of space is a wonderful thing.

As my friend above noted; keep doing the research, lots to find out still

-P

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Yea, Pearl, I can stream fine from my (wired) networked drives as well as those USB-connected to WD unit.  I still have lots of space on my two 2TB USB drives, but I won’t forever, and will be looking for more storage.  The new 4TB My Cloud looks interesting, but since I have the Pogoplug, maybe I really don’t need it.