[knives of ice]

"but doesn't stickmount require root?"

Yeah I think so, root is the first think I do when I get a device, I forget not everyone does that, and this being a gift makes it tough, you want it easy to use for them, and like it or not, your gift = you're tech support..

The easiest thing might be plug the hard drive into their (another assumption) home computer and access it over the network, I was unimpressed by the wifi speeds, but once I added a 1gb usb net card ($15 smsc75xx) I am much happier without the pain in the a that an ext. drive turns out to be..

5ghz vs 1gb usb (don't have the 100mbs #'s but it's dead in the middle of these 2)

5ghz


1000/mbs

yes, i root every android device as well BUT i'm sending this as a christmas gift to ppl that won't even understand how to share a drive over the network. yes, that would be so much easier. i want to give them something that all they will need to do is plug the hard drive in open kodi and everything will be setup for them. i was trying to do this without root since they'll lose root if they have to do a system update in the future or do one accidentally.

this is such a huge fucking pain in the ass that i never thought was going to be a problem.

I decided i would just let the nexus format my 2tb drive and i'd love everything, then just reinstall the backup which is going to take forever. the problem is that for some reason the nexus bootloops when working with big drives. i found a great post about it on reddit after the fact:

https://www.reddit.com/r/nexusplayer/com...nal_drive/

so now i need to find a way to get this drive working then i should be ok i hope. this really shouldn't be this difficult google really messed up with this.