Sharing USB drive attached to Raspberry Pi with rest of network?
#1
Hi,

Apologies if this has been answered previously but I've done quite a bit of digging and cant find the answers I'm looking for.

I have a Raspberry Pi running Kodi, attached to my router and a USB HD. Everything work brilliantly, but I would like to be able to access the USB HD attached to my Pi over the network, so I can add movies etc without having to dig it out from behind the TV and physically plug it into a different machine.

I have both Windows and OS X machines in the house and would be happy with a solution for either.

I've found lots of information on how to access the rest of my network from Kodi but not the other way round!

Any help much appreciated.
Reply
#2
Which distribution?
OSMC, OpenElec, Raspbian?
The way to do it depends on this.
I have OSMC and a 1TB USB disk which I access via samba through the network just fine.
Bo Berglund
Sweden
Reply
#3
Thanks Bosse_B

I have OSMC too
Reply
#4
Isnt it a more logical solution to hook the drive to ur router, and let evthg incl rasbpi accesss the drive there? This makes it look more like a nas which is what you seem to want
Reply
#5
A raspberry makes a great little NAS if it's fast enough for what you need. Last time I used a router (a few years ago) it was a lot more picky about what you could connect. And slower.
Depends on the router, obviously.
Reply
#6
Thanks Miguix,

I believe that the USB on my Virgin Media router has not been activated by my ISP!
Reply
#7
If you have the funds just go out and get a WDmy Cloud 4 terabyte and it has a USB port on it to add unlimited amount of Hard drives to it, just over $ 100 bucks and the NAS set up is easy on Raspberry and FAST
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
Reply
#8
(2016-01-13, 16:58)bigfeet_boy Wrote: I have OSMC too

Go to the MyOSMC App store and install Samba. This should be all that is required.

No need to spend money on yet another device to provide NAS function.
Reply
#9
I am running Kodi OSMC on a Raspberry Pi 3. I have all of my mp3 files on a USB thumb drive plugged into the Pi. Everything works perfectly. I have installed SAMBA. I am using FileZilla and can access the Pi but I do not see the USB drive. How do I access the USB drive from my Windows 10 PC?
Reply
#10
USB drives should be automounted in /media.
Reply
#11
Samba does not automatically share all your filesystem. There may be some setting up needed to share your USB drives. As these are OSMC questions (and ally nothing to do with Kodi) I suggest you try the OSMC forums.
If I have helped you or increased your knowledge, click the 'thumbs up' button to give thanks :) (People with less than 20 posts won't see the "thumbs up" button.)
Reply
#12
@bigfeet_boy 

just a footnote and only want to mention it....

LibreELEC has that option in its settings to automatically share external drives:

https://libreelec.wiki/libreelec_settings#tab__services

Just FYI
Reply
#13
I have the exact same question as the OP but I'm running OpenELEC.

I have enabled Samba under System-OpenELEC-Services as well as the option to automatically share externally attached devices but yet I can't seem to find my USB-attached WD drive from my Windows 10 PC.

What is weird is it has been working in the past and considering I haven't touched the OpenELEC config since I first set it up I'm wondering if it's maybe something related to recent Windows updates. Just speculating...

Any tips highly appreciated!
Reply
#14
Type the address; 192.168.x.xxx/raspberry/directory, then you will be asked for user and pword, click remember.  Samba was changed in the recent Windows update, lots of posts about it.
Reply
#15
(2018-05-20, 17:38)donbrew Wrote: Type the address; 192.168.x.xxx/raspberry/directory, then you will be asked for user and pword, click remember.  Samba was changed in the recent Windows update, lots of posts about it.
 Tried what you suggest but still no go. I replaced raspberry and directory with the system name of my RPI and directory with the name of the external device.

Also, are you positive about the syntax? Usually when connecting to a share you would use \ rather than / in the address such as \\servername\share.

Will keep looking for a solution or maybe I'll replace OpenELEC with something that works better. The purpose of my RPI is very simple, just to show pictures on the attached USB disk and preferably in a nice fashion with fading in/out effects etc and a chance to choose for how long each photo should be displayed. Another important feature is being able to show the photos in random order and looping so it won't stop by itself after all photos have been displayed.
Reply

Logout Mark Read Team Forum Stats Members Help
Sharing USB drive attached to Raspberry Pi with rest of network?0