How to share media stored in an attached drive using Windows Media Player?

Question

We've got a Windows 7 PC with a Windows Media Player music library that includes both files on the internal hard drive and files on a USB-attached hard drive. When we browse this library from another Windows Media Player (on another Windows 7 machine) we see only the files residing on the library host's internal drive. The files residing on the attached drive don't show up at all, yet on the host they appear undistinguished within the library.

Is there a configuration change we can make to cause the attached files to be shared properly?

We've turned on read-sharing for "Everyone" on the USB drive, but that hasn't helped. Also it might be worth noting that this issue behaves the same way for us if the client machine is a Playstation 3.

Answer 1

Check firewalls first and foremost. Next thing to check is if the external drive is added to the library in Windows Media Player. Organize > Manage libraries. It takes a few for it to sync up. I have the same problem at home. External drive houses media, connected to PC. I try to stream newly acquired content from the external to my ps3, it wont recognize it until after its been added to the library and processed properly.