Marshmallow & USB HDD Question

by shatheid

So, some clarification from Nexus Players users, or others who may know, on what Marshmallow will allow us to do once its out on the ShieldTV.

I'm wanting to use an external drive that has my media loaded up.

1.) Will Marshmallow allow me to write onto that drive within Android? Say, if I took transferred files from my pc to the shield on an sd card, could I move them onto the USB HDD from there? Also, would it require me to "lock" that HDD to the Shield, or could it still be used with other devices?

2.) Could I transfer files from my PC to that external HDD that is hooked up to the ShieldTV? It seems like this should be possible, but I haven't found a way yet (apparently not possible on 5.1)

I thought that the above things were going to be possible initially, but the more I read about it...it seems that you'll have to format the drive to be "tied" to the ShieldTV...which, is far from ideal for my use-case.

It also seems that 2 isn't possible either.

Can anyone offer any insight/assistance?

Thanks!

bigbillpdx

This sounds like the perfect application for a NAS. Even if you have an existing external drive, you may be able to turn it into a shared drive for free. Many routers have USB ports that allow you to share a drive.

vectorzulu

2.) Could I transfer files from my PC to that external HDD that is hooked up to the ShieldTV? It seems like this should be possible, but I haven't found a way yet (apparently not possible on 5.1)

You can do this now with 5.x. I have a Shield connected to a 6 TB HDD and Kodi can see and play files from it.