How to Set Up Your Boxee Box as a USB File Server

The Boxee Box by D-Link can do much more than stream your favorite videos to your TV. If you’re a Boxee Box user searching for a way to share files among multiple Windows computers that share a single Internet connection, the solution is easier than you might think. Attach a formatted USB storage device to your Boxee Box to create your own network-attached file server.

Setting up Boxee as your media hub is remarkably simple. Follow these easy steps and you’ll be sharing files in no time:

• Attach an external USB drive to your Boxee Box through the USB port. (You can also attach a USB thumb drive, although it will have a much lower file-storage capacity.) Boxee supports the following external hard drive formats: NTFS, HFS+, EXT2, 3, 4.
• Power up your Boxee Box and open the Settings menu. Choose “Network,” then “Servers.” Then click “Enable Windows File Sharing.” This will enable your Boxee Box to see files from any computer on your local network (in other words, all of the computers that share the same wired or wireless Internet network as your Boxee Box). You can secure the connection by adding a password, however the username will always be “Guest”.
• Any of the computers on your network should automatically detect the USB attached to your Boxee Box as an external storage device. If you do not see it, you may need to manually input the Boxee Box’s IP address into your computer. To find the IP address, open the Boxee Box’s “Settings” menu, then click “System” and in the IP address field under “Information” you’ll see a series of numbers separated by periods (for example, 192.168.1.101) – this is the IP address.
• If you experience difficulty with the setup, check out Boxee’s online instructions or the USB thread on the Boxee user forum for more detailed information.

Once your Boxee Box-attached USB drive is running, you’ll be able to drag, edit or play files from any networked computer on the server. And voila—you’ve got your very own Boxee-based file server!

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