Here is a guy who is having problems with the external drive. I am pasting his post here. Instead of 10.5 I have the 10.4 and a Macbook instead of an imac.
This is his setup
Popcorn Hour A-110
I installed a 1TB WD Hard drive into the A110. The A110 formatted this drive itself
The A-110 is connected to the a Time capsule, which is what is running the network in my room. This is a wired connection.
I have an one of the new imacs running OSX (10.5.6). The imac is also connected to this same network. through the time capsule.
I have media on the imac which i can easily run through the A110, using network share. NO PROBLEM! I also have a 1TB Lacie connected to the imac through firewire 800, and the content on that can also be accessed on the A110 through network share. NO PROBLEM!!
I can also drag and copy files onto the internal 1TB HDD installed in the A-110, from the imac, over the network. NO ISSUES!!
Problems:
Recently i purchased another 1TB external HDD & a 300 GB WD External HDD.
Both of them were formatted on Mac OS X (Extended).
I filled the 300 GB completely with MKVs. The 1TB has around 500 GB left in it. After uploading all the data onto them, i then connected these drives to each one of the USB ports on the A110.
Both the drives shows up on the imacs network sharing window. I can access the content on both these HDDs through the imac over the network.
My intention was that whatever new content i download on the imac, i could easily drag and drop this content into the external HDDs connected to the A110 (Usbs,
(LIKE I DO WITH THE INTERNAL HDD INSTALLED IN THE A110) and just play it from there, instead of having it on my imac (which takes up space), and also to avoid issues of network lag when playing large files.
To my utter disappointment, this is apparently not possible.
After a lot of reading and research, this is the situation
IF the drives are formatted in Mac OSX (Extended), i can copy whatever i want when the drive is connected to my imac. But when i attach this drive to the network, there are some permission issues and OSX does not let me do so.
IF the drives are formatted in FAT32, when connected to the imac, OSX does not let me put in a file bigger than 4GB (apparently this is a limitation with FAT#32 formatting). Over the network, the file transfer starts, but OSX gives me an error at the end every time.
IF i format the drives in NTFS, when connected directly to the imac, OSX does not let put anything in them due to some permission issues. I then did some more research, and found out that using a program called MACFUSE, it was then possible to put files into the drives with NTFS formatting, when connected directly to the imac. Over the network (when connected to the A110s USb ports) its the same story - OSX does not allow me to do so.
Please can anyone help me out?!? what should i do? This is my basic aim
I want to connect these external HDDs to the USB Ports on the A110.
I want to be able to drag and copy media onto these drives through the network from my imac, using network share. ( I CAN EASILY DO THIS WITH THE INTERNAL DRIVE IN THE A110, OVER THE NETWORK)
The only solution i see is to format the drives in Mac OSX Extended. Bring them to the Imac every time i need to upload something. Then connect it back to the popcorn and view it then.
Honestly, i cannot bring myself to believe that this is my last resort. Im sure there is a solution to it, and i would greatly appreciate anyones help.
Does anyone know why after having the Macfuse and the NTFS-3G istalled and formatting the Ext. HDD its causing problems is there a work around.
thanks