External Hard Drive problem

General discussion about the media server. Feature requests. Hints, tips and tricks.
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Kevling
Posts:5
Joined:Mon Nov 19, 2007 9:58 am
External Hard Drive problem

Post by Kevling » Mon Nov 19, 2007 10:11 am

Hello everyone... I'm a newcomer to Twonky, having just purchased the full product after enjoying the 30 day trial.

I'm using a Mac Mini with an external USB hard drive to stream my media to my PS3.

The problem I have, is that most of my data is stored on my external drive, so whenever I boot my Mac up, it seems that Twonky is up and running quicker than my hard drive, so instead of having 3000+ songs, 4000+ photos and about 50 videos, all Twonky picks up are the 800-odd photos that are on my Mac Mini itself.

I've tried changing the scan interval to -1 to see if it picks up when the hard drive comes online, but it makes no difference.

I only generally add media every couple of days, so having the server set to rescan every few minutes seems like overkill. And if I set it to something like every hour, I often end up turning my Mac on purely to stream media, so I have to remember to do a manual rescan anyway.

Can anyone think of a way I can either force Twonky to scan my USB drive automatically when it comes on line, or if there is a way to delay Twonky starting up until the drive is available?

Cheers.


Oh,and Twonky -thanks for a great product!

Kevling
Posts:5
Joined:Mon Nov 19, 2007 9:58 am

Post by Kevling » Mon Nov 19, 2007 10:39 am

Ok... after a bit of lateral thinking, I've set up an Automator action to run every time I boot my Mac. It pauses for 60 seconds (giving the external drive time to mount), then opens the Rescan URL in Safari.
I've just done a reboot, and it works, although it's a little messy. For some reason I end up with 2 Safari window open (1 my homepage, the other Twonky) which I have to manually close. OK for now, but I'm sure it'll start to really bug me in about, ooh, 2 hours time... I put that down to me being a newcomer to OS X Automator.

Can anyone think of a "tidier" way of doing what I'm after?

Kevling
Posts:5
Joined:Mon Nov 19, 2007 9:58 am

Post by Kevling » Mon Nov 19, 2007 11:01 am

OK, step three... found an Automator action on the Apple site that closes Safari.

So I added that to my Automator action, and also updated Safari's settings so that it doesn't prompt me when closing multiple windows, and Bob's your uncle!

So I've not only answered my own question, but hopefully given some ideas to any other relatively new Twonky/Mac users (like me) who may have a similar problem...

Thanks for listening!

Kevling
Posts:5
Joined:Mon Nov 19, 2007 9:58 am

Post by Kevling » Thu Feb 14, 2008 11:31 pm

OK so my original problem is back again as Twonky 4.4.3.1 seems to load/install in a completely different way to the previous version.
The link that forced it to rescan directories no longer works - I get an error when it tries to run it after start-up, so I guess Twonky no longer starts up automatically.
The only way I can get it to work is if I've already run the 'MediaServer' application, but if I get it to run this automatically on startup I'm back where I started with an empty library because my external HDD hasn't booted yet
Am I missing something obvious?

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