As the title probably suggests, I’m about to tell you a disaster story. When I just moved into my new place I had grand plans concerning the technology I wanted in my home. I’m a big fan of watching TV series, so I needed some system through which I could just stream all downloaded stuff to my TV (which I was planning to upgrade as well, I have done so by now). Obviously there are a lot of different solutions around for that, but I’d set my mind to a WD TV Live, which does not have any storage of itself but connects to any network easily and has some added features which I hardly ever use. I’d heard some good things about it, and it wasn’t too expensive, so I got one.
When I got the thing, I started thinking about the actual setup I would need. No, I’m not a big planner, I spend much time winging things as I go along. Now there were a few factors I needed to take into account:
- For downloading, I use µTorrent under Windows. The only way I would ever deviate from that is if they make µTorrent for Mac just as awesome. I heard they’re working on that, I haven’t checked it out yet. There might be a solution there if they’ve added the features I want (rss downloading to specific folders, renaming torrents when adding them to the download list, etc). But for now let’s assume Windows 7 is the OS I need to use.
- I want the downloaded data on a USB HD that is located somewhere that
- allows me to download data to it instantly (instead of needing to copy or some such thing)
- doesn’t require me to turn on anything other than my WD TV when I want to watch stuff on that disk
The WD TV Live supports a USB HD, but that would require my WD TV Live to be switched on during downloading. Right now the disk is attached to my PC, meaning the PC has to be switched on when I watch series. Ideally, my Airport Extreme would be a good place to attach the disk to.
Well I tried this in a number of ways, and it’s impossible I tell you. First I formatted the disk as Mac OS Journaled, which was fine with Airport but Windows doesn’t do anything with it if you don’t download extra software to support the filesystem. I did that, and it still failed because Windows 7 failed to write to the disk. The WD TV didn’t see the disk at all. Formatting as NTFS posed a big problem for Airport, which just refused to share the disk on the network, so of course there was no visibility in either Windows 7 or the WD TV. Then I tried FAT32, because I was on the slippery slope down to hell anyway. Airport said “Ok sure why not”. WD TV said “Hey your disk is empty but I do see it!”. Windows 7 went nuts over it.
First it found my disk and went “Oh wow a network share! Awesome! Let me open that for you. Yeah, let me first get some coffee. And then open it. Really.” I got to the point where I believed (one can never be sure with Windows) I was on the disk, and tried starting a download. “Wait, you want to *download* stuff there now? Oh hell, let me get more coffee.” µTorrent finally just gave up on trying to write to the disk. I tried a simple copy after that, which sent Windows 7 into calculating the time for the copy for about 10 minutes, after which I decided to stop it. Then there was an actual file, but opening it was out of the question.
I have no idea to this moment what the problem might be. I could be Airport messing with the disk so Windows can’t read it properly, it could be Windows 7 entirely. I’ve tried all the suggestions I found through Google, like turning off Windows Search and tweaking all kinds of stuff on my Airport. Fact is, it won’t work. If anyone could give me any suggestions, I’m very open to them, but to me it now looks like a lost cause. So I boot my PC when I want to watch something, which is quite a shame.