Where to store content?

[srexy]

I have the following:

tv
2.33ghz MBP connecting wirelessly
extreme base station
720gb OWC firewire 400/800/USB2 external drive
Old pc w/firewire 400 and USB2 connected via ethernet 100.

My music and movies are stored on the OWC drive that I have until now had attached to my AEBS. The drawback to this is that I want to stream from iTunes installed on my PC and for some reason the PC will only see 9.9gb of my 34gb music collection (can't quite figure out why).

So I hooked up my OWC drive to my PC and it will now see all content but I really don't want to have my PC on constantly - it runs hot and loud.

Does anyone have suggestions?

 

[bentup]

Well you are going to have to plug that external into something if you want the Apple Tv to sync with it. If you don't want to run your PC like a media server, you could setup your Apple TV to sync with your MBP, and have iTunes look to the external drive for content (not copy the media to your internal HD). Hit sync and leave the drive plugged in while it is syncing.

When it is done, go ahead and unplug the external. This way the content will be available on the Apple TV's hard drive, so it won't have to stream it from the MBP or the PC. Just be sure to plug the external back into the MBP every time you want to sync.

I am in a similar situation with an external and a Power Book, where I don't want to always carry the drive around with the notebook. Haven't had any problems yet! The only other solutions are to hack the Apple TV so you can use its USB port, or go the media server route.