WD HD TV Live Hard disk Sharing through network

Community Archives WD TV Live Networking
1

I’m thinking of buying a WD HD TV Live player and I want to check a feature if available I will go for the purchase. I have a 1 TB Hard disk and I want to access my hard drive through my home network while connected to the WD player through USB. In other words I will connect the WD player to my Router through Ethernet, Can I access my hard drive while it’s connected to the WD player?

2

Yes, you can. But it’s slow compared to normal network copy operations.  I copied a 5.3gig movie file  to my device yesterday to the attached 320gig wd usb drive and it took almost twices as long. But, it worked fine and didn’t casuse me any problems at the time.

3

Like Fangles said, it is capable of doing that. 

But, BE WARNED:   If you’re actually doing WRITE operations using your WDTVL, MAKE SURE you EJECT the disk drive before you power anything down.

People have lost their whole filesystem by not ejecting the disk cleanly; they just yank the USB cable out or Power the drive down, and poof, everything gets corrupted because caching isn’t purged.

4 
But, BE WARNED: If you're actually doing WRITE operations using your WDTVL, MAKE SURE you EJECT the disk drive before you power anything down.


People have lost their whole filesystem by not ejecting the disk cleanly; they just yank the USB cable out or Power the drive down, and poof, everything gets corrupted because caching isn't purged.

Just got a WDTV Live Plus , hooked it up with a 1 TB Hard Disk and shared it to the network.

I will be writing (copying) frequently to the hard disk connected to the WDTV, should I be concerned as well? what is the risk of loosing everything on the hard drive on a power loss, power outrages are common where I live.

5

Yes, you should be concerned with ANY device that uses USB drives, not just the Live(+).

6

And, as always, the answer is to back up your data.

Hard drives *always* fail – they are like tires.  It’s not a question of if, it’s a question of when.  So the solution is to never have data you care about that isn’t stored in at least two places (three is better).  And those places should NOT be associated with each other (like being in the same physical enclosure, attached to the same powerline, etc. etc.).

(Incidentally, this is why RAID devices are poor backup choices if they are self-contained.  A burnout of such a device can take out the entire array).

As long as you have your data adequately stored you never have to worry.

7

Hey Guys, I am PLANNING to buy a HDTV TV Live media player for my wired network.

One question on the Ethernet port speed of the TV HD: I have setup a costy Gigabyte wired network at home, including a gigabit MyBook NAS from WD.

I wonder if the ethernet card in the HD Live unit is 100 or 1000?

Useless to buy a 100 video streaming unit for my Gigabit router/ NAS if i squeeze speed at TV level.

No trace of explanation on this in the documentation.

Can anyone help?

Thanks

Garbaldo

8

Hi Guys,

I have a WDTV Live in the lounge that is connected to two USB drives (where I copy all my movies etc to) and is connected to the network through a home router. I have recently bought a second WDTV live that is also connected to same router (so have the same IP adress and network characteristics). I have setup sharing of the Lounge WDTV but for some reason I can not see the drives from the second WDTV Live. Any Suggestions ?

Thanks

9

Did you change its name?   The default is WDTVLIVE.   If TWO units are sharing the same name, it’ll cause all sorts of issues.

10

Hi Tony,

Yes I have Changed the names to WDTVLIVEL and WDTVLIVEB, It still can not see each other, All sharing is on etc. Both Part of the WORKGROUP Network, sharing IP adress etc…

Any Help will be appreciated

Thanks

Pieter

11

Ok, dumb question:  Did you enable SHARING on BOTH WDTVs?   

SETTINGS

NETWORK

SHARE WDTV ON LOCAL NETWORK

(or something like that)

12

I have a similar senerio.  I’m looking at purchasing 3x WD Live boxes, 1 per TV and one or 2 USB drives.  Can I view (and watch) the contents of the USB drives not connected directly to the WD Live box I’m watching?  Esentially making the WD Live a NAS drive for another WD Live box(es).

13

Theoretically, yes, but just keep in mind that it’s NOT a NAS; the performance doesn’t compare with a true NAS device…

14

Would it be fast enough to watch movies?

Can anyone make the theoretical concept definitive?

15

I have done the same thing, I have one WDTV Live Plus with USB drives and another remote unit with no drives.

I used mainly ISO files but I have a few MKV’s. I was able to watch two different movies and even the same movie at the same time with no issues. However there was some things I didn’t like.

The remote WDTV does not see the other as a media share but as a network drive.

The jpg named the same as the video files for cover art  which display correctly on the main WDTV, show the jpg files as well so it looks like you have twice as many movies as you do. The files still display thumbnails but the JPG is shown as well so it looks like you have duplicates. I suppose correct behavior for a network drive but I was hoping WD would hide the jpgs if browsing video.

Secondly being a network share it means the drives can be mounted by a computer, which means my son could give out my iso’s too his friends. I would like to share the movies between WDTV’s but prevent mounting on a computer. I could copy new files to a local usb drive then plug that drive into the main wdtv and use the file management to copy  the files to the main drive.

It wuld be nice to have two passwords, one to play files on another WDTV and one to mount the drives to copy new files. This way I know that they can only watch the files not copy them

16

I have two WDTV Live Plus installed, in two seperate rooms, With only one (living room) connected to two USB 2 TB drives. All is connected via the same router on my home network, I have mapped the drives connected to the Living room WDTV Live Plus to my Windows home PC and copy movies and series to the two drives. I can access both the drives from the second WDTV Live Plus without any problems.

Two things to Note :

  1. I can only access the disks from one WDTV Live at a time, If i try to do from both , one seams to hang :frowning:

  2. All is Wired (I.e. utp cable connected via GBit router) I have tried with Wireless, but that was slow even if I added a Gbit Wireless USB to one of the WDTV Live boxes.

So to answer all the questions, Yes it is possible, with my setup I haven’t seen any performance issues, 5.8 GB copied to one of the drives in 10 mins.

Regards

Pieter