Hello all,

I have my PB setup with the latest 2.0.34 software and I am extremely pleased with the results. Superb, they are.

I have the PB connected via wired LAN to my PC and it sees the current 3 shared internal IDE drives that I have (running Windows XP).

What I would like to do is add a 300Gb USB2 external drive to my PC, but before I do (haven't bought it yet), can anyone confirm that the PB will be able to see this USB2 drive OK and that it will be fast enough to stream .TS files.

I currently have no problems at all streaming .TS files through my wired connection from the internal IDE drives.

Many thanks,
Kevin

the PB has no idea if your PC's shared folders are internal IDE or USB externals.

Performance wise - there is a bit of a penalty for using USB2 instead of an internal cable, but on a PC it should still be fast enough that the network is the limiting factor. Does take up more CPU to deliver the data.

jor wrote:

the PB has no idea if your PC's shared folders are internal IDE or USB externals.

Yes, I thought that would be the case, but I just wanted to check

jor wrote:

Performance wise - there is a bit of a penalty for using USB2 instead of an internal cable, but on a PC it should still be fast enough that the network is the limiting factor. Does take up more CPU to deliver the data.

The display from my current internal PC drive is flawless, but is there a chance that I will get some break-up of the files playing them off an external USB2 drive ?

Thanks for the reply,
Kevin.

no way to be sure in advance. I'd say it's likely to be fine, because the USB interface to a PC is still much faster than the LAN, or roku's smb performance.

On a linksys slug, the USB drives are in fact much slower than they would be on a PC, and I'd be less sure.

Transfer rate for USB2.0 is what like 420 or 460 megabits? Since the ethernet port on the Roku is only 100 megabits and the SMB functionality is even slower, I don't think the external drive will present a bottleneck. I have almost 300 movies on external Firewire 800 drives, and they play back perfectly. Of course, Firewire 800 is faster than USB2.0, but you should be fine.

That's great, thanks for the help guys. I just wanted to be sure before I spent £150 on an external USB2 drive.

Cheers,
Kevin.