Apple TV + External Hard Drive + Network

I have bought an external hard drive and will consolidate my iTunes library onto it (as it's been cramping my ATV and MacBook's collective capacity). Simple question - if I run my iTunes library exclusively from my external hard drive and plug it into my AEBS, will I have to have my computer on (as well as iTunes) to watch content on my ATV, or can ATV find my library on my external HD with my computer off provided my HD is connected to the network?
Thanks all.

you still need the itunes library running.
appletv will not simply see the HDD, it still needs to link via the itunes library on the pc/mac.

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External hard drive networked via AirPort Extreme gives "The operation can't be completed because an unexpected error occurred (error code -50)" roughly every two days

My lab has about 10 Mac computers. We all access a central hard drive by the way of wifi provided by AirPort. It's just a regular external hard drive (Seagate Desktop Drive) that I turned into our central storage space by plugging it into AirPort (USB). It works pretty well. We seem to be fine with viewing the file directories, opening files, saving, deleting etc., for a day or two. But then after a day or two, when when trying to modify files or move new files onto the central hard drive, we get the error message: "The operation can’t be completed because an unexpected error occurred (error code -50)"
Any suggestions as to what may be causing this problem?
All of the computers are 2011 iMacs & MacPros. The AirPort is 802.11n WiFi. The hard drive is a Seagate USB 3.0 Desktop Drive.
Thank you for your insight/suggestions.

Thanks for your reply. I agree about the communication issue. Let me explain my setup and what I am trying to do and perhaps you can answer my questions or make suggestions.
I have a MAC Mini with a Sony TV for the video monitor. The Mac Mini is hard wired to the AE (Airport Extreme). The AE has a 2 TB HD hooked up to the USB Port. I have a 17" Mac Book Pro on the WIFI Network.
I am trying to use the MAc Mini as a "Media Server" of sorts. Once I get iTunes running the way I plan I am goign to hook up my Apple TV (2nd Generation) to my television downstairs.
What I am trying to accomplish is have iTunes on all my computers look to the External HD on the AE for the files. This is why I am having my (-50 errors).
So far I have noticed that if I go and try to download from iTunes purchased videos that are not ont he computer (to the external HD) it will also occassionaly give me teh -50 error.
Is there a way to change where the files go when I download them? Say I want to download videos to the computer but not to the external HD? However I would want to still be able to move them to the External HD.

Apple TV External Hard Drive (again)

I realize that there have been a TON of questions about hooking up an external hard drive to an Apple TV. Much of what I've read says that it can't be done without unsupported 3rd party software. I've also read that you need to have iTunes running on a computer in order to "feed" the Apple TV.
The reason that I would like to use an external drive with my Apple TV is because I do not want to have to have a worksation running whenever I want to watch television. I'm wondering if the following might be possible:
Copy all of my iTunes, photos, movies, etc. to a 2Tb external hard drive.
Network the 2Tb drive through my AirPort Extreme.
Connect my iPhone to my home wifi network and tell my iTunes on my phone to grab songs from my networked drive. (Can this be done? Everything hinges on this.)
Then stream my stuff to my Apple TV from my phone.
Anyone know if this can be done?

Welcome to the  Discussion Forums
sdforsythe wrote:
Copy all of my iTunes, photos, movies, etc. to a 2Tb external hard drive.
Network the 2Tb drive through my AirPort Extreme.
Connect my iPhone to my home wifi network and tell my iTunes on my phone to grab songs from my networked drive. (Can this be done? Everything hinges on this.)
Then stream my stuff to my Apple TV from my phone.
Anyone know if this can be done?
Sorry this cannot be done

How to open my apple formatted external hard drive in my pc?

Hi guys. I have [or had...] an Australian Imac 27". I do not have the specifications now because the computer died last night. I was working and than suddenly everything slowed down. I tried to open Itunes and icon became an interrogation mark after I clicked it; in the aplications folder several programs had a red mark (sign) in their icons.
Well, I already did all kind of boots and resets and I think I probably my computer died [internal hd]. I live in Mali (Africa), thousands of miles from the nearest genius bar or apple stores.
My immediate problem is with my partitioned 4TB My Book II external hard drive [do not know how it was formatted]. It had in one HD my time machine and in the other some crucial files.
Now I am using a PC and I do not see the contents of the HD. Sure, the PC connects to it showing that there is a partitioned hard drive. But it does not open.
Do you think is a MAC OS - Windows problem? [fat x ntfs] How can I solve this problem?

MacDrive for your PCs... allows them to Read/Write Mac HFS+...
http://www.mediafour.com/products/macdrive/

Apple TV/External Hard drive Question

Here's my problem...
Next year I will going away to college. I have a relitively large DVD collection, and don't really want to take all of the physical DVDs with me. i've figured out how to get the DVDs onto my Macbook Pro using Handbreak. The problem is, I won't have enough space to do my whole DVD library.
Would it be possible to store all of my movies on an external hard drive, and keep all of my music still on the Mac? I know that iTunes would only allow me to watch the movies when my HD was plugged in, but I don't want to have to keep my HD plugged in to listen to my music. If all of this is possible, would the Apple TV still recognize my iTunes movies with the external harddrive plugged in? I hope all of this makes sense.
In short... I want my movies to work on my Apple TV (haven't bought one yet... not going to buy if this wouldn't work), but don't want them to stay on my Mac.
Any help or suggestions would be great

Yes it will work fine. In iTunes go to preferences -> Advanced -> then de tick 'Copy files to iTunes media folder when adding to library'. Then go to add to library (in the file menu) and navigate to your folder on your external HDD with your films and add it. All your films will be added to iTunes but iTunes looks to the external HDD to read them.

Apple Extreme - External Hard Drive - Time Machine????????

Can i connect an external hard drive to a apple extreme and use time machine for automatic back ups? If so, how?

J_Corrigan_93 wrote:
can you two speak english lol.
If you'll be specific instead of talking about "things" and "somthing" (sic) and "doesn't work."
Remember, we can't see over your shoulder or read your mind from here.
I got a usb hard drive thing
You've posted in the Airport forum, so is it connected to An Apple Airport Extreme? If so, directly or via a USB hub? If so, is it powered? Does the drive have it's own power supply?
Or is it connected to an Apple Time Capsule? Or directly to your Mac? Or something else (ie, what)?
How is it formatted?
and i try to turn on time maching it turns it self off. I try to back up it says disk cannot be found or somthing like that.
What does it actually say? If you're not sure, post a screenshot.
I tried selecting the disk but that doesnt work either.
What do you mean by "doesnt work"? What happens, or doesn't happen. Any messages? If so, what, exactly?
Or, perhaps, you might want to see one of these for detailed instructions:
How do I set up Time Machine to an internal or directly-connected external HD?
How do I set up Time Machine to back up to my Time Capsule?
How do I set up Time Machine to back up to an Air Disk on my Time Capsule?
How do I set up Time Machine to back up to an AirDisk on my Airport Extreme?

Old 144G Apple TV - External Hard Drive

My old Apple TV has a 144G hard drive and I want to know if I can use the USB connection in the back to connect to my iMac for an external hard drive? Would hate to waste the memory simply because I upgraded to the new Apple TV.

unfortunately, the ATV is not an external hard drive device. If your in need, take it apart and strip out the hard drive and put it some other use -- trashing the ATV. But bigger hard drives are cheap!

Ndas using HFS capable? External hard drive Network Attached.

I did a search and didn't find what I needed.
I would like to know if typical external hard drive enclosures with ethernet connections (NDAS) can be formatted to HFS. I've seen that you can use Ximeta Inc. software for NDAS using 10.4 but I can't find if I can format that drive to HFS.
Reason? I've heard HFS is much faster and more flexible for large files (4gb+) and large hard drives under a mac OS. If my files are less than 4gb, is FAT32 going to be slower than HFS? I know NDAS can take FAT32 but wasn't sure about the HFS.
If there is no speed difference on a 802.11G network from a FAT32 formatted disk to a HFS formatted disk I guess I'll just format is FAT32 just in case I bring a pc along in the future. I just want the fastest speed for video streaming.
Thanks!
Message was edited by: Lawrence Tam
Message was edited by: Lawrence Tam

in my opinion the protocol is more of an issue than the drive format. Like was said above you can typically format to whatever type of drive you want as long as there is a utility to do so or you can mount it via usb/firewire as well. That said if at all possible id stik with hfs+ or ext3 .
Personally i will only use NFS and AFP because of ccertain things (mainly character limits) and ive been hard pressed to find NAS that supports these well (and also supports RAID5 and has at least 4 bays).So now im thinking about actually building a stripped down box and running a Linux distro on it. Although ive heard bad things about netatalk (appletalk for linux) so i don tknow... im aways awa from having the cash to do either though so ive got some time to make a decision.

Erasing all music from iTunes and starting over from an external hard drive

Hello,
I tried moving all my media to an external hard drive to make room on my MacBook Pro and just be able to run the media (ie music movies etc) from the external hard drive when it was connected.
Well this backfired big time probably because I did not follow any sort of instructions.
1st I backed up Finder > music > iTunes > iTunesMedia folder to two seperate external hard drives just in case.
2nd I think (this was back in March 2013) I decided to cut/delete the folder Automatically Add to iTunes and moved it to one of my external hard drives (this folder for some reason contained mostly everythiing that was in the iTunes Media folder).
3rd I finally decided to erase content from iTunes Media Folder
4th I deleted the iTunes Media folder because I felt it was stupid to have a "iTunes Media folder" and "iTunes Music Folder" in the same place but not actually have anything in the iTunes Music folder (probably really stupid of me in retrospect)
5th I unchecked the box under iTunes > Preferences > Advanced "Copy files to iTunes Media folder when adding to library"
6th I believe I changed the location of "iTunes Media folder location" in the Advanced area under Preferences thinking this should be pointing to my external drive
I then believe I tried to run iTunes and play my content, but when I did all it did was copy my music/media back to my MacBook Pro hard drive but I did not realize it was doing this until later the next day when I tried to play some music and realized I had 3 copies of everything in my iTunes program (ie music movies podcasts tv shows etc) however, I could play all three versions of whatever it was I selected there was no "error message" saying that iTunes could not located that file, would you like to try and locate.
So I checked Finder to see if there were 3 copies of everything (by the way at this point I stopped connecting my external hard drive for the sake of making more copies on iTunes) but there wasn't??? So I tried to go through Option+View > Show Exact Duplicate Copies and delete all but one of the items. When I would delete them and it asked if I wanted to move them to my Trash Bin I clicked yes and all the 2nd and 3rd copies were gone!!! Yeah, so when I played those songs/movies that remained they would play!!!!!
Than I realized that my Internal Hard Drive was almost full and went looking around for things I could delete to help make my MacBook run better, and realized that my Trash had a large amount of data in it and that emptying it would significantly reduce space on my Internal Hard Drive, but when I went back to iTunes and selected music or movies to play it placed the infamous "!" next to that track or movie and it could not locate those items anymore?
Long long long story short hopefully, can anyone help me set up iTunes so that it only can play content/media off of my external drive and not take up space on my internal hard drive? Is this even possible to do that or will always start to copy those files from the external hard drive back onto the internal hard drive? and second is there anyway to use the Apple router external hard drive to use as the source for all my media?
PS I am running Mac OS X Lion version 10.7.5 and iTunes 11.1.3 (8) 64-bit

2012EVOL wrote:
Hello,
I tried moving all my media to an external hard drive to make room on my MacBook Pro and just be able to run the media (ie music movies etc) from the external hard drive when it was connected.
Quit iTunes.
Copy the entire /Music/iTunes/ folder to the external. Don't only copy the iTunes media folder.
Hold Option, launch iTunes, select Choose library... and select the iTunes folder on the external.
This is all you need to do.
Everything for iTunes (except the application) is on the external.
2nd I think (this was back in March 2013) I decided to cut/delete the folder Automatically Add to iTunes and moved it to one of my external hard drives (this folder for some reason contained mostly everythiing that was in the iTunes Media folder).
Make a shortcut to this folder on your desktop.
Nothing should be in this folder. When you put a file here, it will get moved by iTunes and added to the library.
The reason it had files in it is because you moved it.

Hi! I have a WD my book external hard drive plugged into my imac and I want to share it over my network with my apple tv. I went into system preferences sharing, checked "file sharing" and added my external hard drive to the shared folder. So now it is

Hi!
I have a WD my book external hard drive plugged into my imac and I want to share it over my network with my apple tv. I went into system preferences > sharing, checked "file sharing" and added my external hard drive to the shared folder. So now it is listed in "shared folders" but under "users" everything is grayed out (it says "read and write" for "everyone" - but "read and write" is grayed out, and it doesn't let me add or subtract users). Now I can access all of the folders I shared from my imac except for the externalhard drive. What's going on?

Hi RRFS!,thanks for help.I forgot to tell that hard drive has 2 partitions 1:format :Mac OS Extended (Journaled) and that works properly,2:format:MS-DOS (FAT32) and when i "get info" for both :first has shering & permitions:You can read and write - with name and privilege, second has shaing & prermissions:You can read and write- without name and privilege

How do I connect my external hard drive with all of my digital media to my Apple TV network and make it accessable 24/7?

How do I connect my external hard drive with all of my digital media to my Apple TV network and make it accessable 24/7? I have the latest Apple TV, ipads, iPhones as well as a solid HP Windows machine all on my home network. Is there a way that I can connect my hard drive to my receiver or Apple TV directly so that the digital media is available on my network 24/7 rather than have it connected to my computer and available through Home Share which never works anyway??

Sorry it's all done through iTunes.
The following article(s) may help you with home sharing.
Troubleshooting Home Sharing
Troubleshooting Wi-Fi networks and connections
Recommended Wi-Fi settings
Wifi Diagnostic Software (for Mac users)
You may also find some help on this page, where I’ve collected some of the more unusual solutions to network issues.

Can you share an external hard drive over a network when your Apple Airport Extreme is in bridge mode?

Hello, is it possible to share an external hard drive over a network when I have my Airport Extreme in bridge mode? I can't use my AE as my main router at the moment but still want to be able to use the hard drive on the network, and the router I am using isn't capable of adding an external hard drive. I use Windows 7 and the other router is a Netgear. I have searched the communities and have not come across an answer to this question. I have tried several configurations within windows to try and see the hard drive but none have worked. I can see the hard drive when I run Airport utlities, but it cannot be seen on the network. Thanks to anyone who can help!

I think there is some confusion in this thread..
If you are sharing on a local LAN port forwarding is not required.
is it possible to share an external hard drive over a network when I have my Airport Extreme in bridge mode?
Answer is yes.. no port forwarding, mapping whatever term is used.. is needed. Port mapping is required when you cross over a NAT router.. as long as all the devices are inside a single LAN.. then no port mapping.
I assign to my Airport Extreme, do I do so with the settings of:
Service: SMB
Type: TCP
Server IP: xx.x.x.x
Port Start: 445
Port End: 445
This would not work even from WAN.. SMB is blocked by all responsible ISP.. there is simply too many unprotected windows machines out there. If they allowed SMB .. the world would be flooded with hijacked bots. And stolen data like bank accounts. SMB is not a secure protocol.
But this is not necessary on a LAN.
The problem can be Mavericks which does a terrible job presenting network drives.. The usual recommendations are to use AFP or force the connection to CIFS (ie SMB1 not 2).
If you use airport,, then use AFP.
In finder.. Go, Connect to server.
AFP://AEname or AEIPaddress. (replace with the network name of the AE or its actual IP address).
When asked for password.. type public if you did not change it or use whatever password you put.
Store the password in the keychain.

My efforts to remove malware from a network external hard drive connected to my Intel based iMac is now causing programs to hang when I try to open them.

I own an iMac, recently updated with OSX 10.75. It is the core computer on a home network shared with an iPad, Apple TV, two network printers,my wife's laptop, two iPhone, a BlackBerry and a BlackBerry Playbook. I am experiencing three if not four problems that are overwhelming.
My original problem is associated with Windows emails files or documents stored on my external network hard drive. One or more has malware and is sending malware laced files across the Internet to points unknown. As someone pointed out in a forum my iMac may be hosting,sharing and propagating Windows malware. I originally used Trend Micro software on my IMac to monitor any viral activity. Two weeks ago I noticed a number of notices from servers around the world saying my message was not undelivered. Since I had sent messages to the people I simply deleted the emails. Next I noticed the emails on my BlackBerry and my BlackBerry playbook.I configured the Trend to do a complete scan and although it did a complete scan it did not perform a full network scan. It did identify a series of .x27 document files with the same name tbut each had a sequential number. I assumed hat these were the source files that had sent out the email documents selling Viagara and othernproducts. I manually deleted thousands of the source documents and the files. This caused some disruption to my computer but it did not produce a hardware or software problem. By following this effort in conjunction with security scans I do believe the malware was activated by Iranian students who were able to activate the malware through my BlackBerry and BlackBerry Playbook. I learned this from an encounter I had when trying tondelete these files on my computer and my BlackBerry.
When using my PlayBook after deleting the files from my computer I noticed more messages being returned from servers. I realized that email accounts connected to my BlackBerry and BB Playbookn were not protected from this problem. As I searched for remedies I learned about turning on the firewall in the previous version of Lion but that did not stop the BlackBerry problem. Each time I deleted a source file on my computer more documents were released. I eventually received McAfee from my ISP. It provided security on the entire network. My first full scan of my external drive identified two malware files. One of them was associated with the Cialis ad the other was from a firm in the Middle East called ADP. it could not remove the latter file.
Moreover each time I attempted to remove the source file from my hard drive a file labeled A239A076F would show up on my Blackberry. As I removed them thousands of these files would show up. Ultimately I eventually disconnected the external hard drive and removed the battery from the phone and not use the email accounts these messages had used to enter my iMac. I am contacting ATT about BlackBerry data security and switching to a different phone for business purposes. I will probably change to an iPhone or Android phone for business purposes. I am also looking at ways to resolve the malware on that drive. There are a number of business and personal files on thatbdrive that I hope to keep. I dread having to pay McAfee to configure the software to eradicate the malware.
Moving on...last week I updated my iMac to 10.75. It simultaneously updated every Apple based program as promised. It did not update the non-Apple programs. I am not an IT professional and assumed that it had done so. On Saturday I attempted to download a file associated with my router extender using my untethered Playbook and BlackBerry desktop software. The program hung. I attempted a reboot and it reopened with the hung program. It created an alias file on the desktop. My inclination led to put the alias file in the trash can and delete it. My computer did not respond well to that action. It has been rebooted with Cmd-s-esc tens of time to see if that would activate a file check. It did not. I was able to run a disk utility check. And in spite of the hung process it eventually said the drive was okay.
Long story in a nutshell. My iMac is responding as if it is looking for a subprogram to complete its a function. Or it is attempting to finish the BlackBerry operation it began on Saturday. I hope this makes sense to someone and the know how I can restore functionality to my iMac.
Thank you.

I think the McAfee suite will do the trick when I pay them a one-time fee of $69 or $179 for a year for unlimited support.
Your call of course but IMO a waste of money. Please read this first:
There are many forms of ‘Malware’ that can affect a computer system, of which ‘a virus’ is but one type, ‘trojans’ another. Using the strict definition of a computer virus, no viruses that can attack OS X have so far been detected 'in the wild', i.e. in anything other than laboratory conditions. The same is not true of other forms of malware, such as Trojans. Whilst it is a fairly safe bet that your Mac has NOT been infected by a virus, it may have another security-related problem, but more likely a technical problem unrelated to any malware threat.
You may find this User Tip on Viruses, Trojan Detection and Removal, as well as general Internet Security and Privacy, useful:
https://discussions.apple.com/docs/DOC-2435
The User Tip (which you are welcome to print out and retain for future reference) seeks to offer guidance on the main security threats and how to avoid them.
More useful information can also be found here:
http://www.reedcorner.net/mmg/

ITunes library stored on an external hard drive which is connected to my airport extreme, I wish to share my iTunes library over my network, I can do this with my laptop, but not with my iPad, can anyone tell me if it is possible

I have my iTunes library stored on an external hard drive which is connected to my airport extreme, I wish to share my iTunes library over my network, I can do this with my laptop, but not with my iPad, can anyone tell me if it is possible

You can't connect directly to the external drive, but should be able to use iTunes Home Sharing via the laptop.
http://support.apple.com/kb/PH1453

We have 3 MacBook Pros in our house, connected by a WiFi network. I am having troubles connecting an external hard drive thru our router, to make back ups of all three computers wirelessly.

I have purchased a 3rd party external hard drive to back up all three computers. I have done the intial back up by connecting each computer separately to the drive via USB. I was told at the Apple store where I purchased the drive, that I could then connect the hard drive to our router via the USB and then use Time Machine to back up the computers wirelessly. But I can't seem to figure out how to do that. I have connected the device to the router, but don't see it on Finder and when I check with Time Machine, it doesn't recognize any device. Help please!

First off your external drive must be formatted Mac Extened (Journaled) for it to work with Time Machine. As that is not a widely used format, the Apple Mac format, most routers do not support it so the router will not see it is even connected to the router. For the router to see the drive is must be formatted either FAT32 or on some routers they can see/read/write to the NTFS format. But if you kformat it like that then Time Machine will not backup to it.
About the only device that can be used for network backups of Mac computers is an Apple Time Capsule.
So you have 2 options.
1) Do all the backups by connecting that drive directly to each Mac.
2) Take it back and get a Refund then buy an Apple Time Capsule. And or some other Network Attached Storage device (a NAS) that cane be formatted Mac Extended (Journaled) and be seen on your LAN and that the Mac's can backup up to.
<Edited by Host>

Apple TV + External Hard Drive + Network

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