Please help ! I am helpless

[Oric]

The problem :

A Western Digital Media Player is connected to a LCD TV set. This media player recognise external hard disk when they are hooked on its USB ports.

My friend has recently acquired a NAS server. This server has ethernet and USB ports. Ethernet ports are the main method of connectivity and sharing over the network. However the USB ports only work if external hard disk(s) are connected as additional capacity (not the other way around, if you connexct the NAS to a PC over the USB port the PC does not see it as an external disk)

My friend also has a spare netbook ...

What we want to do ..

Share the huge capacity of the NAS server with the Western Digital Media Player :

We can not simply plug the NAS server to the Media Player over USB ... Both devices expect an external storage device ...

We can connect the NAS server to the netbook and we have a network drive ... Can we map this drive to a USB port of the netbook so that when the netbook is connected over the USB to the Media Player, that port will "mimic" itsself, as if the netbook is an external storage device ...

Your suggestions and help is appreciated.

 

[pjkenned]

To be honest, if you have a NAS (not sure what type but regardless) it is probably worth it to sell the WD media player and get a media player device with a gigabit Ethernet port so that you can access your media over the network without a netbook. Netbook adds another level of complexity to the system, and consumes power.

Also, the netbook may only have 10/100 Ethernet, so it is worthwhile to check this to see if it does. For a lot of HD content, gigabit will make sure you have bandwidth to spare when streaming from the NAS.

Another option is to sell the netbook, the WD media player, and buy an ION based netbook that has an HDMI output to connect directly to the TV.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Short answer is, no, you cannot get a PC to mimic a USB storage device.

 

[Oric]

thank you for the short answer