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rctneil

rctneil

rctneil

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Joined
31 Jan 2007
Posts
1,861
Hello,
I don't have any form of HTPC or any PC connected to my TV at the moment.

I am looking at purchasing a Boxee Box or Google TV type thing in the future though. The problem is that if you want to access and watch the content that I ahve stored on my pc, then the pc obviously has to be on.

How are people getting around this issue? As surely people will want access to their photo collection via their tv's without turning on the pc?

I could just copy the photos from the pc to the device, yes, but the issue there is that I end up with duplicated files which I keep having the update it changes are made and so on.

Basically, is there anyway to make a hard drive inside my machine stay accessible even when the actual pc is switched off?

All my media that I would want to access via my tv is on my data drive (D;\)

Any other solutions? What do you guys do?
 
You need to either

a) Share from your PC, with it turned on
b) Buy a unit which can take a HDD and copy data across
c) Buy a NAS unit
d) Build a seperate, dedicated PC as a file server
 
which one of those routes you take is entirely up to you

b) for me is out - i cba with copying stuff onto the box in the front room. Others feel the same way which is why apple tv ditched the hard drive

c) i cant be bothered with either, far too much faffing about for my liking. Much prefer a nice dedicated small box, thats not too expensive.

that leaves you the option of A or C

Option C for me is preferable as it uses less power, less space, and can be used to backup your pc as well.

You want to be looking at :

Qnap Home / Soho NAS (eg TS219)
Synology Disk Station
Drobo
 
The NAS as suggested is the way to go.. Effectively its just A HDD that just sits on the network 24/7 and any PC/Media box can access it at the same time..

It then comes down to cost.. you can get WD/BUffalo network drives for reasonable money (£100ish for 1Tb) that do the job, and would be good enough for just streaming media files etc..

If you want something faster performing for moving large files, or having lots of PCs/Media boxes accessing them at the same time, as well as giving you some more 'features' then a low end proper NAS like the QNAP TS210 (£150ish + HDD's) is a good start..
 
I got a Netgear Stora, I wanted something cheap and cheerful. It does the job well. Its not the fasted or the most feature filled, but it will suffice.
 
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