is there a way to connect multiple hard drives together so they read as one..for example, i have 2 hardrives for my films etc but i have to disconnect 1 to use the other on my tv..is there a usb hub or something that joins them?
thanks in advance
I'm not sure I understand. Do you mean like a RAID array? Or essentially and auto-sync setup?
>>84028
Not really, no.
Unless you've done a lot of computer architecture, the answers you're going to get are going to seem quite unsatisfactory to you, and you're going to have a load of "Oh, but can't they just .... ? I don't see why it's so difficult." questions. If you don't care, skip the next three paragraphs.
>The reason this problem is so difficult is because computers have, since forever, been designed around hierarchical storage. As you move down the layers, the storage becomes more capacious, but also slower, and with a longer gap between when you asked for the information, and when you actually get it. The processor's instruction cache can hold about 16k, and can deliver 50-or-so bytes every single clock. The memory delivers a 512-byte cache-line, and it can pump them out every 4-5 clocks, but it can take hundreds of clocks from when you ask for a cache line til when you actually get it. The hard disk delivers 4k sectors, and it can get you one every
>It's obvious from looking at these numbers that you're not going to be able to play a video if you ask for one byte, wait for it to show up, then ask for the next byte, and so on. This means you have to make a copy of the video in RAM, and then the cache will make a copy of the RAM, and then the registers will hold data that's already in the cache. These copies are all fine, because they're all the same, and they're always going to be the same, because the only thing that can change the layer below is the layer above. (This is called "cache coherency")
>If you were to throw another computer into the mix, and give it access to the hard disk, all hell would break loose. If one computer writes data that the other computer has cached, how would it know? If both computers modify the same directory entry, and both write their version back, one of these sets of changes will get obliterated. The only way to avoid this is to use filesystems and protocols that are designed from the outset for concurrent access
![postadsuk.com-new-2015-k1-s802-quad-core-openelec-tv-box-fully-loaded-xbmc-kodi-free-sports-movies-tv-shows[1].jpg](https://i.imgur.com/s42m4mj.jpg "postadsuk.com-new-2015-k1-s802-quad-core-openelec-tv-box-fully-loaded-xbmc-kodi-free-sports-movies-tv-shows[1].jpg")
>>84053
Which is what brings us to "why you should get a NAS".
There's no easy way to deliver something that looks like a hard disk to more than one machine at the same time, because they'll both try to treat it like a hard disk, and hard disks were never designed to be used by more than one computer at once.
So you need to offer it something like a network share, that is designed to do this.
If your TV does DLNA, then your simplest solution is to install some kind of DLNA server on your PC, and leave the hard disks connected to the computer the whole time. The computer gets the drives to itself, and when the TV wants to play a video, it asks the computer to send it a copy across the network.
If your TV doesn't do DLNA, then DLNA is probably still your simplest solution. Get a Raspberry Pi, a Bluetooth dongle that does Bluetooth 3.0 or later, a Playstation DVD remote, and an image of OpenELEC for Raspberry Pi. Setup is quick and simple, and your OpenELEC will play all your movies with a pretty interface and a remote that works through walls.
