[Frankie 7]

Ok i am thinking of purchasing a external hard drive so i have more storage for my laptop and my desktop but i also want to store movies so the xbox 360 can pick them up (once plugged into my BT Home Hub), And i can stream those movies through xbox onto my tv.

Now i was told i should purchase a NAS External Hard Drive which has Multimedia Streaming capabilities. This has flown right over my head to ne honest.

Now what i am aksing is has any of our own xbox 360 guys here done this, As in bought a external hard drive for the same purposes i want it for?

If so, Which one did you buy? What do you guys reccommend. I aint that technolical minded to any tech speak will have to be dumbed down. (sorry guys).

Looking for around 500gb - 1TB extra space so all reccomendations will be gladly taken on board. Basiclaly what i am looking for is what any for the xbox player shere bought.


Thanks for reading.

[Sniper Ash6]

I have a Netgear ReadyNAS Duo and that has two 1TB drives in RAID1 (i use it for backing up my computer as well as storing some media files) (they mirror each other eg whatever is on HDD one, is copied onto the second one to keep it safe should a hard drive fail)

There is something called DLNA which will mean the NAS will stream the content that is put into the media file (pictures, music or videos)

I have streamed from the NAS to my 360 and there was no loss in quality or any problems the 360 picked it up very easily

Though it may not be the cheapest route and you probably arent looking for the RAID1 security

[Frankie 7]

Anyone else bought a external drive and uses it with xbox?

[mattclarkie]

The thing about the ReadyNAS that annoys me is the ID3 tag support seems ropey, a large number of my albums are lumped into UNKNOWN. All the albums are tagged using the same software which makes the whole thing even more bizarre.

[Frankie 7]

If anyone with a xbox 360 has bought a External Hard drive and they use it to stream thier movies etc from it, As well as use it for basic storage, Which one did people buy? What i am looking for is basically what others bought who have the set up i am looking just now.
The reason i ask is because my hard drive on my laptop is running low in space.
Thanks.

[butleri]

I've also got a Netgear ReadyNAS Duo. For me it works really well for streaming video, music or photos to my Xbox.

[Beardy101]

Do you currently stream vids/music from your laptop and current external drive to your xbox?
The biggest convenience of a nas drive (I haven't got one myself yet) is being able to access all your media files without having to turn on your pc/laptop.

A friend of mine who isn't very tech minded simply plugs his ext drive straight into his xbox.

I still have to turn on my laptop to stream so I am also tempted to get a nas drive.

[King Tones]

You could just connect an external Hard Drive to the 360.
Thats how mine is setup.

The Laptop's memory is rubbish so i rarely store stuff on it. Everything is stored on my Ext Hard Drive and i have it sat next to the xbox and with a USB extension cable i connect to the laptop when i need to.

Nice and easy and you can pickup a pretty decent Ext HD for under £80

Deftones

[Frankie 7]

Originally Posted by Deftones

You could just connect an external Hard Drive to the 360.
Thats how mine is setup.

The Laptop's memory is rubbish so i rarely store stuff on it. Everything is stored on my Ext Hard Drive and i have it sat next to the xbox and with a USB extension cable i connect to the laptop when i need to.

Nice and easy and you can pickup a pretty decent Ext HD for under £80

Deftones

Cheet guys, Deftones your idea seems like a nice idea. I currently stream movies from my laptop but as i said my storage space is getting a little low now so what i wanna do is get a external drive and move a lot of my stuff onto that.

Can anyone reccomend any decnet externald rives out that will work with the xbox 360? Sorry for being a pest it's just i aint that tech minded.

[Frankie 7]

Ok i think i'll forget about NAS drive, Seen this Buffalo one, would this be ok to use with xbox 360 & laptop?

Buffalo Drivestation 1TB USB 2.0 External Hard Drive: Amazon.co.uk: Electronics & Photo

[King Tones]

Originally Posted by Frankie 7

Ok i think i'll forget about NAS drive, Seen this Buffalo one, would this be ok to use with xbox 360 & laptop?

Buffalo Drivestation 1TB USB 2.0 External Hard Drive: Amazon.co.uk: Electronics & Photo

That looks like it will do the job and from the reviews it sounds as if it is already formatted to FAT32 which is what it needs to be for the 360 to recognise it

Any drive you get will need to be either FAT32 format or HFS+ (mac format)
This will then work fine with your laptop and 360.

Deftones

[Frankie 7]

Originally Posted by Deftones

That looks like it will do the job and from the reviews it sounds as if it is already formatted to FAT32 which is what it needs to be for the 360 to recognise it

Any drive you get will need to be either FAT32 format or HFS+ (mac format)
This will then work fine with your laptop and 360.

Deftones

Thanks man. Looks quite a good price also.

[DongaTon]

Originally Posted by Deftones

You could just connect an external Hard Drive to the 360.
Thats how mine is setup.

The Laptop's memory is rubbish so i rarely store stuff on it. Everything is stored on my Ext Hard Drive and i have it sat next to the xbox and with a USB extension cable i connect to the laptop when i need to.

Nice and easy and you can pickup a pretty decent Ext HD for under £80

Deftones

This is the same set up I have-1 terra hdd sat next to xbox and plugged in, long USB extension that I plug in when I want to add stuff to hdd from xbox.

As said, try and find an hdd that suits you, if already fat32 that's ideal, I got one that was the other format (ntfs? Off top of my head) so had to reformat to fat32, but there are a few programs out there you can download that will do this easily for you.

I got the Hitachi Simpledrive 1tb from amazon for under 70 quid!!! It's tiny, neat and quiet-check it out.

[DongaTon]

This is £64.99 at the moment, just checked. Think that's what I got it for a few month back.

A total bargain.

[kmac_17]

Hi
Im in the same boat

My problem is my external hdd is now in NTFS format as FAT cant handle a single file larger than 4Gb, which is most HD

I currently have my external hdd connected to my laptop which networks through into the xbox360 to play the large files.

I want to try to use a NAS box to get around this and want to know if its possible.

I need a nas box to
A) Support Xbox360
B) Support NTFS over LAN
C) Be able to plug in my external USB HDD in NTFS Format and share over LAN

I have noticed numerous nas boxes saying media support or UPNP. Does this mean it will work?

Im currently looking at the Macpower Pleiades Giga Lan
Macpower - Home / Storage Solutions / 3.5" Hard Drive Enclosures / Pleiades / Pleiades Giga LAN

It support ntfs internally and lan and via USB, and says it has UPNP, but doenst specifically mention xbox360 support.
Does anyone know if this will do the trick?

[loki1664]

Originally Posted by Sniper Ash6

There is something called DLNA which will mean the NAS will stream the content that is put into the media file (pictures, music or videos)

I have streamed from the NAS to my 360 and there was no loss in quality or any problems the 360 picked it up very easily

I use Tversity which converts avi files on the fly while it transfers to my 360, will the files have to be pre converted before being put on the NAS for streaming ? If they do whats the best format and program ?

[ruderger]

I have also been looking at the 'Macpower Pleiades Giga Lan'
It says 'UPnP' and you can access music through ITunes, but I'm not sure about media streaming, another model 'PD-SATA USB/GbE' says 'Xbox 360 & PS3 media server (audio/video/photos)' which sounds a lot better.
Anyone tried streaming with the 'Macpower Pleiades Giga Lan'??

[Decadent Fool]

I'm currently toying with getting external storage for my 360, and initially thought an external hdd would be just fine.

However, as I have a large number of files over 4gb they won't be recognised by the 360 (unless they're wmv and the hdd if formatted as HFS+), so I'm therefore being driven down the NAS route so files of any size can be streamed. I hope so, anyway!

All comments gratefully received!

[cassius76]

Originally Posted by Deftones

That looks like it will do the job and from the reviews it sounds as if it is already formatted to FAT32 which is what it needs to be for the 360 to recognise it
Deftones

My Western Digital 500GB drive is NTFS and streams fine using WMP11 from my PC.

Does this mean if I plugged it directly into the 360 it would then stop recognising it?

[conan]

I recently replaced my aging Maxtor Shared Storage with a Buffalo Linkstation Pro. It is connected via my ruoter to the home network and is there for use as a media file store and backups. One big advantage for Xbox use is that once you have set up the media server and scanned in the library from the PC, the Xbox can then access the Buffalo NAS without the PC needing to be switched on. Previously with my Maxtor unit I needed to have the PC running so the media extender (or tversity) could act as the gateway to the NAS box.

[DongaTon]

Originally Posted by cassius76

My Western Digital 500GB drive is NTFS and streams fine using WMP11 from my PC.

Does this mean if I plugged it directly into the 360 it would then stop recognising it?

Correct. The hdd or any USB storage device must be in fat32 format.

If you have files over 4gb, HD video for example, then I use xenonmkv - it is a great wee freeware app that converts mkv files to avi readable by xbox, and if it's over 4gb it will split it in two for you. It also takes away the 5.1 HD audio and converts to stereo-a small price to pay.

[Decadent Fool]

Originally Posted by DongaTon

...If you have files over 4gb, HD video for example, then I use xenonmkv...

Always interested in finding slternatives to Gotsent. If only you could queue up videos so there was no break