Can I use a USB external drive as a music server?

A question about : Can I use a USB external drive as a music server?

Hi all,

Question about music streaming again I'm afraid

I currently stream my music from a PC running Windows 7, connected wirelessly to the BT Home Hub that we have. I use it mainly with a DNLA compatible wifi internet radio set in the kitchen, but the folders from the PC take ages to load in order to select tracks.

It used to be better when I had our router upstairs and plugged into the PC via Ethernet cable so am assuming the slow loading times are due to the PC now streaming via wifi instead. Moving the hub is not an option.

I have a Seagate external USB drive (500GB) so was wondering whether or not it's possible to have the music on that and plug in the drive into the hub's USB port? Would I need any software on the drive to get the streaming going?

Congratulations for getting this far... Sorry for the long post!

Best answers:

• no you need a NAS drive holding your files , not a USB one , I have a dlink nas that is connected by Ethernet to my router , I can access this (add files) from my main computer or any other machine/media player on the same network
  before you start moaning about the cost (dlink with drives Ј150) , you can buy a raspberry Pi (old version) for about Ј15-Ј20 and have it running as a nas drive in about 20 mins (free software) , your USB drive just plugs into it.
  so as not to bore other users , if you PM me , I will send you links from the web showing how to do this and what software you need.
• You could try using something like homeplug/powerline adaptors to improve your connection speed between your PC and router.
• I,ve contacted the OP , sent him links to two alternate ways of doing this ,
  I estimate his expense's to be approx. Ј30.
  for this , he will be able to play his files on any pc / tablet in the house
• theres no need for a NAS, depending on the version of the router, you can most likely just plug the drive into the usb port.
  This will then share that drive to the rest of the network
• yup , no need for a nas drive , last week when I went to the tip , I was tripping up over discarded nas drives
  averyone seems so happy with the blistering fast speeds using there router ,
  in fact I clicked om a MP4 film this morning at 9.am , and its just started loading.
  if he is having trouble now streaming media with the backing of a nice CPU , he is going to love the speed via his usb port on his modem.
  having tried this idea last year , in order to save buying a Dlink Nas , umm it don,t work , its slowwwwwwwww.
• Need to check out why the wifi is slow on the upstairs machine. I'm assuming it's a desktop (or is it a laptop ?) so is it a wifi dongle plugged in the back of the machine when the line of sight is straight through the PC to the router ?
• You don't say which Radio, nor do you say whether it is regularly switched off, nor what you are using to stream from your PC. Switch one or more of them off it will take time to re-build the indices especially the radio ...just a guess of course since you haven't given much info
• Thanks to all for the helpful suggestions, especially enfield freddy for the links regarding using a Raspberry Pi. Had a look at the instructions for this last night and it's a bit daunting but may give it a go in a couple of weeks when I have some cash available to buy the kit.
  In the meantime I might try plugging in the USB drive into the hub anyway and see if the internet radio can see the folders (BT HH5). Probably not, but you never know. Bit nervous however as there have been incidents I heard about when researching this yesterday of the hub totalling USB drives plugged in as the power is too much for it from that port. Will keep you updated on progress. Cheers all
• Good idea. Will do that. My external drive is a 500GB Seagate one without a seperate PSU so hopefully should be OK. Fingers crossed
• Late last night I decided to check out if the information and links I passed on to mwddrwg were good.
  A few weeks ago it was my sons birthday and we upgraded his old Raspberry Pi for one of the new Pi2 models .
  I claimed the old (one of the first made) Pi s back off him
  using an old sd card I followed the links on youtube , and had a fully working nas drive within about 20 mins , however some Linux knolage and typing is involved .
  Plan 2: (I like this one)
  if someone writes a working shell , use it!
  I downloaded a copy of "openelec" which is the xbmc media centre programme , copied the files to the sd card and booted.
  a couple of simple setup questions were asked , I did not need to change any , as I,m not going to be using the programme.
  with the Pi booted , yup not even connected to the tv , just sat in the corner with a usb power lead and a Ethernet cable , I could see the thing on my computer
  Plan b: part 2
  Linux cannot see a ntfs drive , it can see fat32 and ext3 or 4 , however windoze decides your drive must be NTFS , cue a free programme "mini partition magic 9" , download run and reformat your USB frive to fat32 or one of the ext formats and label it "xxx"
  if you use fat32 , you are tied to a max file size of 4 gig
  I plugged the drive into the PI , fastened them together with an elastic band , and booted it
  there on my computer was the Pi complete with a folder called "xxx"
  I could then copy files via Ethernet to the folder (and indeed remove them)
  the thing streams quite well , the 512m memory one might be better , or even the 1g memory one the Pi is about 700 MHz , that's on par with my dlink nas drive
  so for the cost of a secondhand Pi , a 8 gig memory card and a phone PSU , cheep nas time .
• very possibly , however that does not seem to be one of the options to format a drive in the currant windows editions or indeed in the partition tool I suggested , please elaborate as to which commonly available (free) PC programme offers this choise , as I would like to try this method out.
  *** https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NTFS-3G , cant see windows listed there , and can see a bad comment already
  "Benchmarks show that the driver's performance via FUSE is comparable to that of other filesystems' drivers in-kernel,[8] provided that the CPU is powerful enough. On embedded or old systems, the high processor usage can severely limit performance.[9] Current versions often show 100% CPU utilization on dealing with big files on fragmented NTFS file systems.[10] Also, caching support is very poor."
  however the other 2 options I stated seem to work well , and or corse if you format in fat32 , you can use the drive in a conventional PC if needed
• ok to add , "fightsback" , you suggest ntfs-3g , how do you do this on a PC.
• ok thanks for adding a suggestion that the average windows user can,t use
  until you can link us to a freeware program that works on win 7 or win 8 , I think we can forget your idea.
  any other off the wall ideas , or do you want us all to set up a separate machine and learn Linux just to format a hard drive?
  your input into this thread has caused nothing but confusion