MCE cant find external hard drives

[ukulele_ninja]

I have two external HDD's that I plugged in and setup with MCE. However, when I go to say 'audio' it will not find or let point to where my audio files are on these drives, although 'hard drives' are selected from the list. This is the same for video files and pictures as well.

[tschak909]

when you set up these drives, how did you specify how the files were stored? LinuxMCE File Structure or Public?

-Thom

[ukulele_ninja]

Thom your a godsend, thanks for all the assistance thus far, I'm sure ill have lots more questions for you.

When I set up the drives I thought I had chosen public, how would I tell?

[tschak909]

The only way to tell after the fact is to go into the Web admin > advanced > configuration > devices ... select the hard drive, and look at the PK_Users field, see if it's set to public, to a user, or to "Pluto File Structure"

-Thom

[compaqpresario]

What should be chosen in this case for best results? 

[colinjones]

Not sure what issue you are having... but as a general rule I always recommend using the LMCE folder structure, but that is only so that you have the Filename sort option in the media grids.

If you do not use that option, then all your media needs to be tagged with meta data before it will appear in the other sort modes (eg Title, Performer, etc) Any audio you have ripped from the source using a decent ripping program, to mp3, will generally have this meta data downloaded from the Internet and written into the embedded id3 tags inside the mp3 file.... LMCE will read those in and use them as the meta data so that you can see the media. Well known DVD's ripped on LMCE itself will also be tagged by LMCE (but not if you rip the DVD's elsewhere). Even mp3's downloaded from the Internet generally have their id3 tags already set ready for LMCE. Almost all other media have no meta data, and so needs to be added through the LMCE admin interface before they are visible in the media grids with those other sort modes. Using the LMCE folder structure, when asked during detection of your shares, will give you the option of browsing your media under the Filename sort mode, irrespective of whether they are tagged, because it is just using the file/folder names to display the media.

[compaqpresario]

@colin jones

So selecting the linuxmce structure for the harddrive will not effect playback on a pc/windowz as suggested by the prompt?

[colinjones]

I can't remember what the prompt suggests, but no, no impact whatsoever on playback for other devices. The only thing that option does on the share is insist on a particular folder structure so that it can manage the media in a consistent manner. It will create the appropriate folders (if they do not exist), then all you do is move your media into the correct folders. LinuxMCE does the rest.

The only impact you may have to consider on the PC/MAC/etc side of things is, if you are using your general purpose PCs (ie PC/MAC/whatever) to play back some of this media, then you will need to point iTunes/Windows Media Player/whatever at the new location for your media and allow them to rescan the media back into their respective databases... but that is a trivial task. After that, they will coexist quite happily.

[compaqpresario]

Thanks. can always depend on u for an answer man.