Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[bean_counter]

I use Media Center on a dedicated PC, and my library is saved to a PC formatted external USB drive.   If I copy the library to an NTSF formatted external USB drive, will Media Center on a MacBook Pro (with an NTSF driver installed) be able to use the library?  Would a simple import or auto import work?

I would like to continue to build my library on the PC, but be able to unplug the drive and take it along with the MacBook. 

[glynor]

It depends if you mean big-L Library or little-l library.

If you mean the former, then no. Media Center's Library is OS specific.  Also, storing the Library on an external disk is a recipe for pain.

If you mean the latter (referring to the media files on disk, and whatever metadata they contain), then yes.  MC can import files from any volume your Mac can mount, and it'd have read-only access to the NTFS drive by default.

By the way, I recommend Paragon NTFS for OS X.

FWIW, MC works quite well under Parallels Desktop, and probably on vmware fusion as well, though I haven't used the current versions.  And that does allow you to use the Library directly if needed.  You still may not want to store the Library on the USB drive, but there are solutions for that, especially if you have an always-on PC at home that can serve the Library over the network.