Media Center 7 + NAS

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leemarrett

51 posts

Master Geek

#75302 16-Jan-2011 10:54

Has anyone had any experience with keeping their media all on a NAS drive and adding directories on it as libraries in WMC7?

I've got the NAS directories mapped to local folders on the HTPC, and haven't had problems adding the folders as libraries in WMC7, but...

The mapped directories aren't behaving like local storage -- when I browse to say "Movies" under WMC7, it updates the library each time; so if I have 130 files on the NAS, when I first go into "Movies" it says there are no files. Going out and back in again it then says "25 files" and then another time and all the contents are there.

This happens even after playing a file off the NAS, so as you can imagine it's a bit of a pain...

Disrespective

1925 posts

Uber Geek

#427597 16-Jan-2011 11:57

I've never had that problem... Do the directories appear instantly when browsing the folders when not in media center?

I have my directories mapped with over 1000 folders appearing in under a second when not in MC. However I use MediaBrowser instead of the built in movie player/viewer when in MC and find it much nicer and is plenty fast enough with an auto refresh which works well.

Perhaps you should think about an addon like MediaBrowser to satisfy your needs.

leemarrett

51 posts

Master Geek

#427604 16-Jan-2011 12:19

Yep, using MediaBrowser already :)

The problem I was talking about is happening in MediaBrowser too :(

Another issue is that even though when I created the mapped drive I specified "automatically connect on logon" the mapped drives don't connect until I click on them in Windows 7.

If I don't click on them, and just run WMC7, the libraries aren't found at all.

Normally it's not a problem because I keep the media pc on all the time, but if I restart it's annoying obviously.

leemarrett

51 posts

Master Geek

#429916 22-Jan-2011 16:45

This is even more frustrating with music, which isn't showing up at all :(

daskip

79 posts

Master Geek

#429939 22-Jan-2011 17:33

I'd love to talk solutions but honestly I moved away from WMC7 to XBMC due to silly issues like this. I just flip back to WMC7 for live tv and recordings. :)

Having to pop out to windows media player to tell it to update its music library to get new music that has been sitting there for days on my home server was silly. I think it works well with local libraries, but niggling issues like these just weren't cool.

I never found WMC7 to be that rock solid anyways, random crashes every couple of weeks when using a remote only sucked.

Regs

4066 posts

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Snowflake

#430452 24-Jan-2011 09:44

leemarrett: Has anyone had any experience with keeping their media all on a NAS drive and adding directories on it as libraries in WMC7?

I've got the NAS directories mapped to local folders on the HTPC, and haven't had problems adding the folders as libraries in WMC7, but...

The mapped directories aren't behaving like local storage -- \

do you need to access the directories directly from other machines too, or just from the MC box? If you only want to access then from the MC box then perhaps an iscsi nas box might be a good option as it presents the storage as local disk

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Snowflake
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leemarrett

51 posts

Master Geek

#430475 24-Jan-2011 10:41

Well it's currently 70% devoted to housing our media (pictures, music, video) and 30% devoted to being a backup location, so yes it needs to be available to the other machines in the house too.

I've managed to get the TV and Movies sorted -- Media Browser's new release runs as a service and it seems to play much nicer with network shares -- but dropping out of Media Browser for Music is still a complete disaster; no matter what I try I can't get WMC7 to index the files.

Interestingly windows media player can't see them either.

Ive more or less resigned myself to getting a new hard drive and storing everything locally rather than use the NAS as a central media repository.

Regs

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Snowflake

#430490 24-Jan-2011 11:14

in your scenario, you could switch to iscsi storage, provision the 'discs' to the media center and then share out the folders from the media center machine to everyone else.

the advantage of this is that you can seperate your storage from your media center machine: hide it in an attic or the garage etc, especially out of sight of potential theives, put several disks in and RAID them, run big fans that you dont want in the lounge etc

the disadvantage, is that the file shares will only be available while your MC box is up and running.

(depending on the iscsi solution, you can sometimes allow different machines to connect to an iscsi disk as 'read only', so its possible you could also mount the disk as local on other machines. While technicall possible, you wouldnt want several machines to connect to an iscsi disk as read/write.. that might corrupt your disks)

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Snowflake
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Twitter: @nzregs

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leemarrett

51 posts

Master Geek

#430501 24-Jan-2011 11:54

curiously intriguing... what could I be looking at here in terms of cost? everything i've seen involving iscsi is outrageously expensive....

the other thing I could look at is a windows home server -- have a feeling WMC7 might play nice with a windows based file server....

Regs

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Snowflake

#430519 24-Jan-2011 12:24

up to you to determine cost....

roll your own using an old PC:
http://freenas.org/FreeNAS
http://www.openfiler.com/
http://www.starwindsoftware.com/ (windows)

buy a 'home', or 'small business' one:
QNAP http://www.qnap.com/pro_detail_feature.asp?p_id=134
Netgear ReadyNAS http://www.netgear.co.nz/nz/Product/Storage/Work-and-Play2/RNDU2220

buy a commercial 'SAN' one:
yeah, starting at $10K for an HP/NetApp/EMC etc you're probably not going down that path :P (unless you buy a seond hand one, but then you'd need lots of space and power to run it)

iscsi support is built into windows so there is no client cost involved.

there are a bunch of how-to articles on teh net for roll-your-own. try googling openfiler, freenas or starwind, for example.

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Snowflake
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about.me/nzregs
Twitter: @nzregs

leemarrett

51 posts

Master Geek

#430528 24-Jan-2011 12:35

Oh, OK so there's no hardware requirement -- I used to have an old FreeNAS box so I just format the discs in a different way?

Not had any experience with iscsi sorry...

Regs

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Snowflake

#430692 24-Jan-2011 19:31

this blog looks like a good "how to" for freeNAS and iscsi:

http://virtual3c.blogspot.com/2009/08/setting-up-iscsi-drives-using-freenas.html

it shows you how to configure the freeNAS box, and also how to connect to the iscsi disk(s) from windows 2008. the process for win7 is pretty much identical.

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Snowflake
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PANiCnz

989 posts

Ultimate Geek

#431140 25-Jan-2011 19:05

Freenas recommend you use the ufs file system which is native to the underlying bsd operating system. Alternatively zfs is a very good solution.