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sdilley14

macrumors 65816
Original poster
Feb 8, 2007
1,242
201
Mesa, AZ
I have a number of movies and TV shows stored on my external hard drive. I keep them on my external drive as the hard drive on my MBA is only 128GB. I have an Apple TV as well.

I am wondering, what would be the best way (if there is a way?) to stream the content from my external hard drive directly to an iPad (don't own one yet, thinking about it though...would love to be able to lay in bed and watch shows that are stored on my external HD).

Thanks!
 

kingalexthe1st

macrumors 6502
Apr 13, 2013
475
165

I have one of these for the very same reason as OP and my advice is avoid it. It worked for a month then stopped workig for any iDevices. I checked out the seagate forums and it looks like their drives are notoriously flaky and Seagate don't bother addressing the issues.

Alex
 

charlituna

macrumors G3
Jun 11, 2008
9,636
816
Los Angeles, CA
I have a number of movies and TV shows stored on my external hard drive. I keep them on my external drive as the hard drive on my MBA is only 128GB. I have an Apple TV as well.

I am wondering, what would be the best way (if there is a way?) to stream the content from my external hard drive directly to an iPad (don't own one yet, thinking about it though...would love to be able to lay in bed and watch shows that are stored on my external HD).

Thanks!

There are drives as noted. Although it is worth noting that Seagate was bought out by Lacie and a revamped drive is forth coming that with luck won't have the wifi issues.

If you are looking at this for at home use then try just mounting the external on the MBA. Go it into iTunes and in the preferences tell it not to copy items to the iTunes folder when added to library. Drag all those videos into library. Turn on home sharing on computer and iPad. Then just sleep the MBA with iTunes on and it will act as a server on your wifi to your iPad wherever you are in the house.

Once these new drives are out you can check them out for something you can take out of the house as well.
 

sdilley14

macrumors 65816
Original poster
Feb 8, 2007
1,242
201
Mesa, AZ
There are drives as noted. Although it is worth noting that Seagate was bought out by Lacie and a revamped drive is forth coming that with luck won't have the wifi issues.

If you are looking at this for at home use then try just mounting the external on the MBA. Go it into iTunes and in the preferences tell it not to copy items to the iTunes folder when added to library. Drag all those videos into library. Turn on home sharing on computer and iPad. Then just sleep the MBA with iTunes on and it will act as a server on your wifi to your iPad wherever you are in the house.

Once these new drives are out you can check them out for something you can take out of the house as well.

Perfect, that is exactly what I was looking for. I'm just wanting to use this at home, and I have no problem mounting the HD to my MBA and putting it to sleep. I didn't know about the iTunes preference "trick".

Just curious, how exactly does that work? If you tell iTunes not to copy the items to the iTunes folder, then you drag them into the iTunes library...what exactly is "happening" with those files that allows you to access them? Is it just essentially creating shortcuts within iTunes that point to the files on the external HD?
 

ManhattanBeach

macrumors member
Oct 24, 2013
56
1
I can't wait for the day when all of our devices can wirelessly sync without having to download apps or find workarounds.
 

sdilley14

macrumors 65816
Original poster
Feb 8, 2007
1,242
201
Mesa, AZ
There are drives as noted. Although it is worth noting that Seagate was bought out by Lacie and a revamped drive is forth coming that with luck won't have the wifi issues.

If you are looking at this for at home use then try just mounting the external on the MBA. Go it into iTunes and in the preferences tell it not to copy items to the iTunes folder when added to library. Drag all those videos into library. Turn on home sharing on computer and iPad. Then just sleep the MBA with iTunes on and it will act as a server on your wifi to your iPad wherever you are in the house.

Once these new drives are out you can check them out for something you can take out of the house as well.

For anyone interested, this worked perfectly...thank you!

Now I just have to convert a pile of AVI files to MP4. :S
 
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