I live in a Mac environment with WD external hard drives spraid out all over the place. I want to gather them all into only one solution and Live Hub seems like the right move.
I need just few clarification from you guys before I’ll purchase it.
Hope you can find the right answer to those questions:
-Does it display medias shared via external hard drives or it just relies on the internal 1T disk? I mean, once the internal drive will be full, would it be possible to expand the capacity connecting external hard drives? Also does the USB port provide enough energy to power up a 2,5"HDD?
-Would I be able arrange files and folders within the internal hard drive via Mac?
I was actually thinking to split the internal hard drive into two partitions: one for music and photos, the other one for videos. Would you suggest me to do so?
-First thing first as soon as I get a new HDD is formatting it with mac journaled with Disk Utility for Mac OSX. What is the fastest and most reliable formatting code?
-Have you ever tried to wire it to an Airport Express. This way I wouldn’t need to use any wifi dongle right?
Hope you can light the path in the right direction.
To answer you first question, yes you can hook up external drives to the HUB to expand its capacity. You can only hook up 2 though, one on the rear USB port and one on the front and right now you can’t connect drives larger than 2Tb. This is a firmware issue, one that hopefully will be resolved so that larger drive can be connected. And yes, you can connect a non-powered 2.5" HDD.
Second, yes you can use a MAC, but there is no need in trying to splitting the drive into partitions (not even sure if you can, since I haven’t looked into that) all you need to do is have seperate folders for music, videos, etc., but even that isn’t neccissary since the HUB (depending on how you filter) will only display music when you select “Music” from the main screen and the same for videos.
Third, since I’m not a MAC guy, I couldn’t tell you the best way to format a HDD. You should probably look at some of the MAC forums for that. But the Mac format that the HUB will accept is HFS+.
Forth, not really sure about using an Airport Express. But if I understand how it works correctly, then I don’t think so because I think the AE needs Mac OS X to configure it.
I’m on mac and have had no real issues so far. The HUB reads my HFS+ formatted drives just fine. I have the HUB connected to an Airport Xpress, and this works just fine in my wireless environment also. A little complicated to set up - but not to much of a problem - also, now there are several guides on the forum as well so it should be fairly easy. The twonky server on the HUB works fine on my mac also. I use “BOXEE” if I want to stream from the HUB to my mac - works flawlessly… no setting up what-so-ever…
I’ve tried several NAS-drives before, and returned all b/c they couldnt handle my mac-drives when plugging them in thru USB - again, works perfect with the HUB.
I chose this over the Apple TV b/c the internal storage, and the fact that it plays everything I throw at it !! Seriously! I’ve more than a 1,000 video files encoded in all kinds of messy ways I’ve come across maybe 2 or 3 files that the HUB cannot play… (and the fact that the Apple TV would require re-encoding of all these files is just ridiculous)
However I still need to figure out what is the best solution to share the hub wirelessly inside and outside my local network.
Airport express looks cool but not practical (it turned out to be fairly slow when it comes to copy files from mac to hub wirelessly).
WD Livewire seems to be the way to go but haven’t understood if it will also provide wireless sharing connectivity. Any clues?
In case it will not I think I will buy the Netgear WNCE2001. What do you reckon?
I’m only using the Airport express b/c I had one lying around anyway. … The simplest and cheapest way is just to plug a wifi-dongle into the USB port - the HUB is DLNA ready - so it should do whatever you want… … I dont know about streaming wireless HD to your TV if this is what your after…
Formating what? An external drive or the HUBs internal drive?
There’s no need to format the HUBs’ internal drive, it is formated as NTFS, which the Mac can read. However, Macs can’t write to NTFS, but you can get around this by using NTFS - 3G.
And then see THIS about formating an external drive to HFS+, which is the Mac format supported by the HUB.
There’s no need to format the HUBs’ internal drive, it is formated as NTFS, which the Mac can read. However, Macs can’t write to NTFS, but you can get around this by using NTFS - 3G.
Well, not the whole truth. When you access a drive over network - and not thru USB - it plays by different rules. I can drag-n-drop files easily from my mac to the HUB since I’m connected thru wifi…
Just out of curiosity (as I said, I’m not a Mac guy and the only experience that I’ve had is some limited use of a friends Mac), is it the same if the HUB is mapped or is that just accessing it as a network connection?
The reason I ask is because I did try to map a NTFS to my friends Mac (OS X 10.5, I believe), but couldn’t write to it. Although, I may have been doing something wrong, since it’s an unfimiliar OS to me and he was no help because he didn’t really know anything about how to set up his own network.
Just out of curiosity (as I said, I’m not a Mac guy and the only experience that I’ve had is some limited use of a friends Mac), is it the same if the HUB is mapped or is that just accessing it as a network connection?
The reason I ask is because I did try to map a NTFS to my friends Mac (OS X 10.5, I believe), but couldn’t write to it. Although, I may have been doing something wrong, since it’s an unfimiliar OS to me and he was no help because he didn’t really know anything about how to set up his own network.
Well, I’m no expert on this, so to be honest I have no clue. Haven’t tried mapping a drive to a mac - I think :-). How would mapping a drive be different from accessing it over network? I get the WDtvlive hub drive showing as a mounted disc in my Finder window, and here I can read and write as much I want. (although fairly slow b/c of my G-wireless setup). Is this not mapping?
Yes, “mounting” on a Mac should be the same as “mapping” on Windows. As I said, I was just curious, because I was having trouble with a friends Mac. But since apparently it IS possible, I guess I’ll have to some reading up before I try it again.
Find the Sharing preferences pane and make sure that SMB sharing is enabled. I’ve never had trouble reading or writing from/to the Hub with my Mac (OSX 10.6). The Hub mounts as a Shared Device.
The Hub behaves much better on my network than my old TVLive.
I’ve come across maybe 2 or 3 files that the HUB cannot play… (and the fact that the Apple TV would require re-encoding of all these files is just ridiculous)
