Output harddrive contents to USB connection?

Sleepy

I have an old laptop I don't use any more and a DVD player that takes a USB connection and plays avi files from external hard-drives etc. What I'm looking to to is find a way of getting windows to show the contents of the laptop's hard-drive (or other drives connected to it) to the DVD player via a usb connection between the two?

Anyone know if this is possible? It seems like it should be the most simple thing in the world given that the DVD player can recognise a 'dumb' disc, surely there has to be a way for windows to present the contents of a folder, drive or external disc to it in this format?

Any ideas or tips for software? I'd happily pay a few quid for something that would work but if an Open Source solution exists all the better!

Kristopherus

If you connect any external device to your laptop or computer, it should show up as an additional drive when you click on My Computer. Double click on the icon on My Computer and the contents should show.Hope that helps.

Adyx

If you don't use the laptop any more, easiest solution is to take out the hard drive and put it in an external enclosure. I can't think of any way of doing it over usb while the hard drive is still in the laptop.

Sleepy

Thanks for the replies.

I'm trying to make the laptop show up as a hard-drive so I can have the machine on a home network, drop files on it across the network and play them on the dvd player.

Alternatively, is it possible to split a usb connection? I could connect the laptop to the hard-drive and the hard-drive to the dvd player that way...

DevilsBreath

Hi Sleepy

What you’re talking about is creating a shared drive on the notebook.

This can be done quite easily

http://www.ehow.com/how_2019957_shared-drive-network.html

Adyx

DevilsBreath wrote: »

Hi Sleepy

What you’re talking about is creating a shared drive on the notebook.

This can be done quite easily

http://www.ehow.com/how_2019957_shared-drive-network.html

That doesn't help with playing the files on the DVD player though. Another option is to share the drive over a network as above and just connect the laptop directly to the TV without using the DVD player.

Sleepy

It's one of those funny things, this *should* be relatively easy to do but I just can't find anything to help with it!

Capt'n Midnight

No it's not easy.

The laptop is a master device as is the DVD player and neither will act as a slave.

To give an example of how difficult it is , those yokes that claim to be usb transfer cables are really two usb network cards joined together.


It's a real shame you can't just use a usb cross over cable but thats the way the standard works.


Put the laptop HDD into a usb enclosure. But move the media into a sub folder or maybe even the root folder to make it easier to browse.


Back in the old days you could hook one SCSI cable and it's devices to two computers. (the second one to boot would be read only). You can link computers with serial, but that was painfully slow even in the 80's.

Network is the sharing method of choice. It's what it was designed for, the main problem is configuring passwords, firewalls and stuff.

Sleepy

I just don't see why software can't take control of what's being transmitted along the usb cable? Once that's possible, it's should be as easy as presenting a 'virtual' drive made up of the contents of given folders on the machines hard-drive to the DVD player.

I get that the coding of this might actually be quite complicated (as you're having to directly control hardware) but I can't see why it can't be done.

Taking the hard-drive out of the laptop eliminates the benefits I'm trying to achieve: I want to have the laptop on the home network and be able to drop files to it at will, RDP to it and clear down watched media etc. and to feed the contents of it's drives (or attached external drives) to the DVD player's USB port. A 'Y cable' connecting an external hard-drive to both the laptop and the DVD player could achieve this as only one device should be accessing the drive at a time (i.e. laptop writes file, when finished, DVD player reads file) but from what I'm reading on-line there are serious complications with splitting USB connections.

Capt'n Midnight

Sleepy wrote: »

I just don't see why software can't take control of what's being transmitted along the usb cable? Once that's possible, it's should be as easy as presenting a 'virtual' drive made up of the contents of given folders on the machines hard-drive to the DVD player.

I get that the coding of this might actually be quite complicated (as you're having to directly control hardware) but I can't see why it can't be done.

Intel was forcing USB on all motherboards 15 years ago when laplink cables were still in use, USB was 100 times faster so you would have thunk...

The problem is not software, if it was difficult I'm very sure it would have been done back then. It's the hardware wot won't talk nicely.