Registered: Aug 2002
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In this guide we will be mounting your local Drives in a single folder on your C drive, so you only have to make one "bookmark" in XboxMediaCenter or map/share one drive on another PC.

You may not have as many drives as shown in this guide but you can add less or more if you want.



Start by making a folder and put it in the root of your C drive in this guide we will call it MySharedDrives!



Make subfolders in it that corresponds to your other local drives (they can be made later but its easier now)


You will be able to mount removable media like DVD/CDROMs and Card Readers for easy access to your pictures.
It will even work with Deamon Tools drives (you should get this app even if your planning not to do this guide)

TIP! I like to name my drive folders with the Drive letter first, then the size and lastly a description of the media it holds like:
D 120Gb Music / E 120Gb Pictures / F 120Gb Movies / G DVDROM / H CDROM / I Deamon DVD / J DigiCam
This way they can be sorted alphabetically and they are easily identified






Time to begin mounting your drives into the folders you just made


Right click on "My Computer"
Select "Manage"
Select "Disk Management"

!!!The next two commands will take you directly to the "Disk Management" so you wont have the menu on the left side as shown in the next screen.!!!

Goto START > Run and type:
diskmgmt.msc

or run the it from C:\WINDOWS\system32\diskmgmt.msc






To view your "removable media" (DVD/CDROMs, card readers and so on)
Select "Disk List" from the "View" pane to see all devices




Lets mount the drives!
You need to mount each drive so you can return to this point to add more drives.

Note: Mounting your C drive in a folder on C will cause loops when searching so its not recommended but you can put an empty folder in the share folder and call it C and just put files you want to share into it.




Right click on the drive you wish to mount in youre folder
Click "Change Drive Letter and Paths..."





Click "Add..."





Check the "Mount in the following empty NTFS folder:"
Click the "Browse..." button





Find the folder you want to mount the drive in
Then Click "OK"

Add all the drives you want or need





Now youre C:\MySharedDrives folder should look something like this and when you access the "folders" you should be seeing the contents of your other drives.

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Last edited by TykSak on 23-09-2004 at 05:35

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But i have a SMB problem with XBMC (XBMC Xbox Media Center 2004-06-18 [Y]) i have no problem accessing SMB shared stuff, but it does take a long time, does it have to do with cache settings?

I cant find any cache settings in the XboxMediaCenter.xml like i could find in the xbmp version.

I use relax becouse it never freezes in the middle of movie watching in xbmp like SMB does.
I wanted to use relax with xbmc becouse i already have it setup running as a service on my winxp computer.
since i couldn't make relax work with xbmc i tried SMB which never frooze in xbmc, but it does take very long time navigating and opening a movie file.

why?

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Yeah, i've got the same prob. Any solutions to this would be greatly appreciated...

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You could try to increase the DIR commad's buffer from 14000 to 65000 on the machine with your shares (NT/2000/XP) this should give you faster network browsing.


Open NotePad and paste this into it:

code:

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

 [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Servi
ces\lanmanserver\parameters]
"SizReqBuf"=dword:0000ffff 

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First off, your guides are amazing and are such great contributions, I have to send you my thanks and appreciation.

The method you described above for mounting in a C:\MySharedDrives folder works, but only for DVD/CDROM and other removable media, not actual hard disks.

If you want to mount hard disks as you show in you screen shot, you must run diskmgmt.msc in Start -> Run.


From there you can right click on the individual drives and select Change Drive Letter and Paths and mount the drive to a shortcut folder, which you cannot do if you if you access Disk Managment from right click on My Computer and going to Manage (Computer Managment).

Again thanks for the guides, and I hope this helps.

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quote:

---

Originally posted by ubermensch
If you want to mount hard disks as you show in you screen shot, you must run diskmgmt.msc in Start -> Run.

From there you can right click on the individual drives and select Change Drive Letter and Paths and mount the drive to a shortcut folder, which you cannot do if you if you access Disk Managment from right click on My Computer and going to Manage (Computer Managment).

---

Thats odd I can Change Drive Letter and Paths just fine in Computer Management, are you using XP Pro or Home Edition



But I can add your "diskmgmt.msc in Start -> Run" to the guide as its another way to access the Disk Management

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For some reason when I right click on the hard disks through Computer Managment the menu produces only these options:

code:

Convert to Dynamic Disk...
Properties
Help

Last edited by ubermensch on 23-09-2004 at 07:17

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Great guide, thanks for making it.

Is there a method to get the files on a drive to show up under the shared folder directly. For example,

f:\dvds\sipderman
g:\dvds\sipderman2

So the shared folder would contain:

c:\shared folder\siderman
c:\shared folder\siperman2

I have lots of moives spread across multiple drives and would like them all to show up as one list in XBMC.

Thanks...Josh

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OK again awesome guides, but a question?

You say that looping the c drive can cause looping problems, but on your pictures, movies, and music folders where did you take those from to have them appear as an actual HD?

Thanks

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quote:

---

Originally posted by leftfoot
You say that looping the c drive can cause looping problems, but on your pictures, movies, and music folders where did you take those from to have them appear as an actual HD?

Thanks

---

Nicely spotted

The loop comes in to play if you mount the C drive in a folder on the C drive

The pictures from the guide is from a test machine with only one HD so I mounted it sevaral times to show the principal but think of them being extra drives

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Hi and thanks for a great guide. It helped a lot when I originally set up streaming from xbox to pc and worked like clockwork. Very straightforward and easy to follow!

However, I've now upgraded and whilst I can still stream to a point, there are drives I'm having loads of probs accessing.

My setup is xbox to SFFPC via crossover cable, using one NIC. The SFFPC has another NIC which connects to a Netgear Wireless Router with Broadband Connection, there is also another pc which is wired to the router, which kinda acts as storage.

Xbox and SFFC are in front room, router and storage pc are in the loft.

I can access the drives in the storage pc from the SFFPC because I have mapped them. What I can't seem to do, or find out how is to mount the mapped drives in my shared drives folder. Is there a way to do this??

The mapped drives don't appear in the computer management screens. Or is there an easier way of doing this??

Cheers!

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quote:

---

Originally posted by FallGuy1969
I can access the drives in the storage pc from the SFFPC because I have mapped them. What I can't seem to do, or find out how is to mount the mapped drives in my shared drives folder. Is there a way to do this??

---

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quote:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Originally posted by FallGuy1969
I can access the drives in the storage pc from the SFFPC because I have mapped them. What I can't seem to do, or find out how is to mount the mapped drives in my shared drives folder. Is there a way to do this??
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------



From the Xbox?

- So they can be read from the xbox in XBMC. I was following your guide for setting up a shared drives folder and mounting drives in that, and whilst I can mount the local drives in there, the process doesn't work as far as I can see for mapped drives.

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I dont think you can share "others" drives.

I guess you have this problem because of your setup (not being able to access the storage PC directlt from the Xbox) maybe you should get everything behind a router.

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quote:

---

Originally posted by TykSak
I dont think you can share "others" drives.

I guess you have this problem because of your setup (not being able to access the storage PC directlt from the Xbox) maybe you should get everything behind a router.

---

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