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LOL Let me back step a little LOL Most of us use Kodi for 2 things either simply streaming or using it off your personal library from a server. Its small and can be hidden behind the TV. And is super fast booting from a SD card.
If you want to add a traditional Hard drive to it you will need the larger case and its no longer small. So you can run Kodi from it.......But most people that set up a small PC will want more power.
You just stepped over the line from being a cheap option for TV's that have CEC to a Slow PC for hobbyist with a small Hard Drive running Kodi
One HTPC Windows 7 pro 64x running WMC with 2 HDhomeRun on Comcast 6 tuners with MCEbuddy
WD MyCloud 24TB over Netgear network | 6500 movies and 40,000+ TV Show episodes
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Which still makes no sense. A lot of people that use RPis for Kodi also use a HDD connected.
Not to mention that the WD 314GB Pidrive is a WD slim drive and the case is still small enough it can be hidden easily behind a TV, it's only 8"(L) X 4 ¼" (H) X 2 ¼" (D), which I would call "large".
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2016-03-16, 10:37
(This post was last modified: 2016-03-16, 10:38 by DarrenHill.)
I have one of these (I was one of the beta testers for it), and can confirm that it works fine with Kodi. We were testing it with BerryBoot, which does put some limitations on things (it only offered OpenElec 6.0.1, although that's now up'd to 6.0.3 but due to how it operates it's not currently possible to do an update to the image itself via the normal tar file method). But there should be no problem I would expect setting it up as a normal dedicated OE or OSMC installation, with the boot from the SD card and everything else being pulled from the PiDrive.
It's a nice compact little drive (for a hard drive) and works well. It's USB3 connected (not that this helps much on a Pi), but the electronics is apparently optimised for the Pi and it draws very little current (one of my fellow testers measured it with an in-line tester at about 200mA playing an uncompressed BluRay).
The PiDrive cable (which I think they are selling separately with the 314GB drive) is also nice, as you then only need one (decent current) power supply to drive both the drive and the Pi itself, as it connects up both.
Can't comment about enclosures as I don't have one, my PiDrive is currently housed in a case made by my daughters from Lego...
Would have commented earlier, but had to check with WD about what I'm allowed to say given the beta testing was under an NDA.
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Any word yet on whether this "has" to use the supplied WD HDD?
Yes, I realize that you need the SATA/Power = USB component before you can just connect any bare hard drive, but what if you simply took apart an external hard drive like Seagates new 5TB 2.5" model?
Is there any sort of proprietary magic being used here that would prevent you connecting to your own hard drive, or a higher than 1TB capacity? I currently have a 4TB 2.5" external drive sitting around doing nothing, and I would much prefer to use it rather than go buying more storage at a lower capacity.
Plus, if I wanted to set this up as a home media center KODI/PLEX solution for a family member for Christmas or something, I don't want to be limited to 1TB.
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2016-11-18, 22:13
(This post was last modified: 2016-11-18, 22:15 by DarrenHill.)
My travelling Pi zero is routinely used with a 4TB WD My Passport drive. It's got a powered hub board on it, but in the past I've also used the PiDrive cable with it to also power the Pi and all worked fine.
And on my Pi3 Kodi works fine with my PiDrive itself.