Network drive doesn't work like a HDD - what's all this shared stuff?

[suburbiton]

I've bought a network drive to use as a wireless external hard drive with the hope of saving my iTunes library onto it and then streaming it to my MacBook Pro.

But it doesn't just work like a hard drive - I can only play music via a 'Shared' icon that comes up in iTunes, and only stream mp3 and WAV apparently.

Why can't it just mount like a USB or FireWire drive that I can move stuff onto? Have I made a massive cock-up?

 

[aristobrat]

That would depend on the network drive. Which brand/model did you get?

 

[suburbiton]

Western Digital MyBook 1TB

 

[angelwatt]

Western Digital MyBook 1TB

Well that's just an external HD (I have the same one). You mentioned a network drive. What's your setup that makes it a network drive? Essentially we need to know more about your setup. What's connected to what and what are the whats.

 

[suburbiton]

It's a network drive:

http://www.westerndigital.com/en/products/Products.asp?DriveID=587

 

[angelwatt]

Yea the missing info there was that is was "World Edition" which makes a difference. According to this thread, the software for it is Windows only so you can't use it as a normal HD over the network like you're wanting. The thread is a little old so maybe someone has found a workaround.

 

[STXSTEVE]

As long as you know the address for the drive you can mount it like any other network drive. Via: Finder, GO, Connect to server, then enter the drive location example: smb://XXX.XXX.XXX whatever the ip is for the drive. it will mount up just like network drive then you can set your itunes folder and anything else on that drive.

Hope this helps

 

[aristobrat]

Why can't it just mount like a USB or FireWire drive that I can move stuff onto? Have I made a massive cock-up?

The PDF documentation (on the page you linked to above) makes it look pretty simply to mount it as a drive.

 

[stujmac26]

Yea the missing info there was that is was "World Edition" which makes a difference. According to this thread, the software for it is Windows only so you can use it as a normal HD over the network like you're wanting. The thread is a little old so maybe someone has found a workaround.

I assume you mean "can't" rather than "can"...

 

[angelwatt]

I assume you mean "can't" rather than "can"...

Good catch.