dual port usb and network hard drive

[kevingilmore]

i'm looking for an external hard drive that i can hook up to an openbox s10
and also hook up to my network, so at the same time i can both record
and have access to programs.

It does not seem that such a device exists.

Sort of like a slingbox but for FTA.

 

[Dee_Ann]

i'm looking for an external hard drive that i can hook up to an openbox s10
and also hook up to my network, so at the same time i can both record
and have access to programs.

It does not seem that such a device exists.

Sort of like a slingbox but for FTA.

That sounds sort of like what I was trying to do. I couldn't find a solution for this so I ended up buying a USB switch box.
I haven't received it yet but the plan is to plug the disk into it then the S10 on one port and the PC on the other port. Then I can use the push buttons to 'move' the disk back and forth between the S10 and the PC. I was reminded to make sure I use the "eject disk safely" option on the S10 and the PC before pushing the buttons. It's not the most elegant solution but it beats swapping wires back and forth like I am now which is a bit of a pain..

 

[mdram]

maybe build your own? buy an external case that has multiple input types
use the usb for the open box and esata for the comp?

 

[harshness]

You haven't found such a device because they don't exist. You can't have a hard drive that is controlled at very low levels by two different devices.

What you really need is for Openbox to add media server capabilities to their equipment.

 

[Magic Static]

Interesting, I'm really glad I went with the AZBox now. No problems interacting across the LAN with the internal HDD on the AZBox. The AZBox plays all the files on the Network Storage unit or PC as well.

 

[Jim S.]

You haven't found such a device because they don't exist. You can't have a hard drive that is controlled at very low levels by two different devices.

That's what they all say, but why NOT? I don't see why it would be any different than a network drive that's accessed by multiple connections at once. You'd just need to build a controller that was smarter than the average controller. Surely there would be a market for this if someone built it.

 

[Pixl]

I've envisioned doing this with a three party software on the computer that could "emulate" a hard drive. Then stream the data out of the OpenBox to the computer usb. Now with VLC running you watch the video stream live!

Does emulating software exist? Idono.

 

[mdram]

its called a virtual hard drive

How to Create a Virtual Hard Drive in Windows 7 - How-To Geek

 

[Jim S.]

That has nothing to do with what we're trying to do.

You can't just cable it to a PC because the PC's USB ports can't act as, I forgot what the actual terminology is, but they can't act as client devices like disk drives, only as a host. But what I'm talking about is, why doesn't someone build a system-on-chip to let a USB hard drive serve multiple connections, either multiple USB connections or USB and ethernet? I suppose it hasn't been done because everybody who needs networked storage just uses ethernet. But that doesn't help us with devices which don't support filesystems over ethernet.

 

[Pixl]

mdram,

That would create a drive that the computer would have access to internaly, actually not much different than adding a partition. The OpenBox would not see it.

 

[Pixl]

JimS,

I can see where you are going, where the OpenBox would write to the drive, and the computer would immediately read that and run the data thru something like VLC.
But if that is what you are thinking why bother to write it to an intermediate drive at all.
My idea was to use ordinary hardware (a computer) loaded with some sort of software that could do the translation on the fly. This would avoid developing custom hardware. Might as well buy an AZ box and be done. But if some software that emulates a hard drive has already been written for some higher purpose, we FTAers could adapt it to our existing boxes/computers.

 

[harshness]

In order to behave like a USB hard drive, it has to look like a USB hard drive that gives track and sector level control over to the host computer. A NAS has the host built in and can't function if it doesn't have the same low-level control of the hard drive.

It would be a little like having two people driving the same car independently. One person could be steering and working the gears and the other wouldn't know that they weren't in control until a driving input wasn't answered. At that point, they would know that they lost control but wouldn't know when control might be returned. Unless they are actually sharing input devices (steering wheel, pedals and gearshift), it simply won't work.

Reasoning that it could be done in a carefully designed scenario using full-fledged computers takes it out of the realm of a NAS.

 

[mdram]

oh, you want a network virtual drive

 

[harshness]

oh, you want a network virtual drive

Except that the Openbox doesn't know about such things. It knows about USB connected hard drives.

 

[Dee_Ann]

The Openbox has a network connector on it and it supposedly runs Linux.
I have read that anything that runs Linux, the people that sell it are required to give you a copy of it's codes upon request or face a lawsuit..

Can't someone hack it to do more useful things like they hacked the WDTV Live Plus?

 

[the_man_one]

depends on the linux code being open source or proprietary linux.... if open source its covered by gpl... if proprietary its owned by openbox coders/manufacturers (which is probably the case)