Streaming of media from network folder

[timekills]

During one of the podcasts, in chat, it was discussed keeping WHS V1 as the mass storage drive for videos, and using WHS2011 as the streaming solution. Theory is to point the WHS2011 to the WHS V1 video folder. I have tried this, but the three available media streaming options do not appear to "see" any networked attached folders. Only locally attached/installed drives and folders seem to be made available for streaming.

 

Is this correct, or have I done something wrong? The networked folder is included in the Videos library (see: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/4511837/WHS2011_VideoLibrary.png) and I've tried it as a mounted drive. Neither seems to work.

 

I have my WHS2011 setup to use Homegroup as a test as well, using the folder as a double share (i.e. shared from another Win7 box, from the WHS v1) just to see if using Homegroup would make a difference, but no luck.

 

Basically - any way to use WHS 2011's Silverlight streaming capabilities with media not directly attached to the server?

 

Would make a great plugin...

[usacomp2k3]

So no mapped network drives?

[timekills]

So no mapped network drives?

Not that I can figure out, at least not for web (Silverlight) streaming. Still need to confirm if it works through media center extenders, specifically Xbox360.

 

Would like to hear anyone else's experience with this. This seems like a significant limitation.

[timekills]

Tried using symbolic links (mklink /d newFolder folderPointedTo) but no joy. Can't make a hard link (mklink /h) to a network share or location in NTFS. Only symbolic link, which is not picked up by the media sharing as a standard directory.

 

I even tried a double link; first made a sym link directory in my WHS2011 D: drive that pointed to my WHS v1 videos folder, and then made a /j type symlink inside the shared media videos folder that pointed to the first sym link. Surprisingly, WHS2011 let me do that, even though the first link was a link to a networked location. When I went t the web site and the videos folder I could tell it was trying to kill itself because it never came up with the list of how many video files it had available to share. Previously it just listed the 7 I had copied over and stored locally on the WHS2011 test server. After making the double sym link it just kept spinning and spinning. Since I have a couple TB of videos on the WHS v1 drive, it might eventually have worked if I had waited (connection to 2011 is via wireless so not the best speeds.)

 

I may have to try that again but have the double sym link point to just one movie from the v1 folder instead of the parent folder.