HOW DO I MAKE A 2ND LOGICAL DRIVE AN NAS DRIVE accessible by network devices

Question

Hello, my main computer (desktop) has Windows 8.1 and an SSD that I use for my primary functions, and a 4TB spinning hard drive with all my media, backup files, etc. I would like that 2nd drive's media accessible to home network devices such as my Roku, my home stereos, my laptop, etc.

It's very easy to get the primary drive (logical C drive) to be setup as NAS - I've setup multiple folders on it - it works perfectly - all other devices on the network can get to those files. I've not, however been able to find out how to configure my 2nd drive (the 4TB logical drive D) so that my ROKU and home stereo see the files. I need to do this because my SSD is too small for all my media files to fit.

I've looked elsewhere and it seems no one else has ever posted this question. Note, the media players on the ROKU and home stereo do not have login capability. This must be setup so that a login is not required (simply sharing of the C drive enables this with no issue).

What's the trick?

thanks in advance.

Answer 1

Hi ,

Please understand, we are not familiar with ROKU and home stereo and we did not have such device to test in our lab.We are mainly focus on Microsoft products. For third-party, you would better contact the vendor of media players for better answers.

I would like that 2nd drive's media accessible to home network devices such as my Roku, my home stereos, my laptop, etc.

For laptop with windows OS, if you want to access desktop's SSD drive. Please refer to the following steps:

1.The first part of networking an external hard drive is to share it to the network on your windows desktop.

2.On your windows laptop, click Map network drive in the top menu and select Map network drive in the drop-down list.

3.In the pop-up window, choose a Drive Letter or you can keep the default one. Then, enter the address of the shared folder; it should consist of the IP address of the desktop computer and the share name like in the form of this “\ip address\share name”.

4.Finally, you can view the contents of the shared folder in the windows desktop from the mapped network drive on the windows laptop.

Best Regards,
Candy

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Answer 2

Thank you, but I'm fully familiar with how to map computer drives. That is not the question at hand. I'm asking about NAS - it is different MS functionality and makes it so user machines do not need any credentials (per se) to access the device. My machine works fine in the networking functionality you are describing (different than the topic). I'm trying to get to where my 2nd hard drive (not an external USB drive) functions as an NAS drive.

Answer 3

Anyone know the answer? I'm still hopeful one of you folks has been here and can share how to do this!