Replace WDTV Live Hub internal hard drive

Hi,

I have bought second-hand a wdtv live hub with a crashed HD and no warranty.

I am gonna give it a try replacing the drive myself but I was wondering if I could try a 2TB or 3TB hard disk drive?

I don’t mind about the 3.5", i will do some “modifications” to fit the drive, i only care about compatibility,

especially for the 3TB hd, that will have to be GPT formatted instead of the classic MRB for the 2TB drive.

Does anyone else had some experience with this? Will it work? Which drive to choose, instead of the 1TB drive?

As we understand, The Firmware limits the use of other than WD drives, Let alone using 3.5" external HDD, You are welcome to try it, Most likely will fail as the FW will fail to spin the drive.

The only series that is known to work on the WD TV LIVE HUB is the WD 2.5" scorpio Blue series

http://www.wdc.com/en/products/products.aspx?id=140

Having said, You may want to experiment with WD drives, you may have better luck

Let us know

Cheers!

wow! the firmware limit the usage of any drive and only allows WD Scoprio Blue series? Why in the good name of the Lord??? And i thought that only Sony sucked at it’s business strategies!

Thanks for the tip anyway!

Are you sure? (i just cannot dig it!)

Yeah! I know it **bleep**! :angry: but it is considered legal in US :smileyvery-happy:

People have attempted something similar here and the bottom-line is * You cannot do it*

http://community.wdc.com/t5/WD-TV-Live-Hub-General/Opening-the-hub/td-p/89463

Try with some other WD SATA 2.5 HDD first to see if takes it, then expand your search by using a lower capacity 3.5" SATA HDD from WD and see if that works…

Good Luck!

thnx for the info.

i will use a 1TB WD Scorpio Blue for now and be on the lookout of a 2TB version when it comes available.

then we will have something to talk about…

Still it’s a pity for WD to limit the hd used! The WDTV Live Hub is such a fantastic device and they only manage to lower it’s reputation with this. I guess the marketing manager should get some lessons from the AMD. When the world bowed to Intel, AMD allowed easy overclocking for their processors, thus forever changing the future (and their market share) of CPUs. Opening the WDTV to easy modding whould be a tromendous publicity and sales boost! WD could focus in new features (for promoting new products) instead of locking their devices so we have to buy a new one just to add some more GBs. It’s pathetic! I feel a bit screwed!

Hey! I feel your pain. 

WD is trying to protect their intellectual property rights :wink: and at the same time make sure only WD drives work with the Firmware so that customers can buy their drives and *only* their drives :angry:

I have seen this with few of their External USB HDD’s as well, especially the new ones with HDD encryption stuff like the Western Digital My Book Essential 1 TB USB 2.0 Desktop External Hard Drive, I have had the WD drive fail after the warranty got over, I wanted to replace that with a Seagate 2TB hdd that was lying around, But the Controller embedded in the External USB enclosure refused to spin the Seagate drive.

I got frustrated with it and just got a SATA to USB convertor and threw the HDD case into trash - problem solved :smileyvery-happy: what else one can do? 

Will I buy any of these sort of USB enclosures again knowing that I cannot replace my own drive with some other than WD drive that I want? — Probably not!

Some of these principles used by companies while it may look cool technically, but will never generate new customers.

Having said, all these devices are supposed to be use and throw materials anyways… :stuck_out_tongue:

Hey Pal, if you can get your money back, get it! 

It will cost $100 to change the drive yourself.  You are better off getting a new, drive-less WDTV and adding your own HD.

If you are still considering this idea of replacing the drive yourself, see this link with a DIY video to open the HUB, along with my post regarding the futility of trying to repair a HUB.  Some things are disposible and not worth fixing – the HUB comes under this category.

http://community.wdc.com/t5/WD-TV-Live-Hub-General/Taking-out-the-internal-HDD-to-copy-movie-files/m-p/299476#M15183

i am using a external harddrive and no problems with that.

Vistawall wrote:

As we understand, The Firmware limits the use of other than WD drives, Let alone using 3.5" external HDD, You are welcome to try it, Most likely will fail as the FW will fail to spin the drive.

 

The only series that is known to work on the WD TV LIVE HUB is the WD 2.5" scorpio Blue series

 

http://www.wdc.com/en/products/products.aspx?id=140

 

Having said, You may want to experiment with WD drives, you may have better luck

 

Let us know

 

Cheers!

Just replaced my live hub internal drive with a seagate drive. I know this is an old post so not sure if WD upgraded firmware for othher drives since then. however those who are looking to downgrade there drive rather than upgrade i know for sure that the Seagate Momentus 5400.2 60gb drive works internally ST96812AS.

I took this out my ps3 a few years ago. I previously had a live hub when it first came out but sold it due to the SMP coming out and  WD seeming to support the smp more than the hub with faster updates, BBC iplayer and more servises. I never had any problems with streaming 3d BD isos (even though played only in 2D) to the Hub without  ever stuttering. When i  purchased a SMP i noticed it was not capable of streaming full isos due to the 100 lan port so sold it and went back to the live hub. I have no need for a 1 tb internal drive as it is slow as **bleep** to transfer to so i used to open it up remove the drive and connect by sata to transfer stuff. As i now have a 8tb qnap nas the only reason i purchased a live hub again was because of the gigabit lan. I’ll use the 1 tb for my ps3 JB and used the 60gb from my ps3 for the hub.

Formatting the seagate 60gb was straight forward as plugging it in and following format instructions. Once formatted i removed the 60gb connected to my pc to check if partitions were created and both partition were created. WDTVPriv partition was created at its normal size same like the 1tb partition size and the remoaining was allocated to the second partion WDTVLiveHub.

60gb is more than enough space for me as all i wanted was an internal HDD for whatever the live hub needed it for not for movies, music or pictures. If i had a smaller drive i would have used it instead. So for all those who want to replace or downgrade theire drive try a seagate Momentus. 60gb version works for sure not sure about bigger or smaller sizes.

Hi my wd live tv hub doesnt pic up the internal drive. What can i do? do i buy a new drive or what?

are you using a external drive on the tv hub? and which one are you using on it?

I don’t know about anyone else but I opted to use a WD My Book 1TB external drive with a Hub I bought “Refurbished” came without an internal HD.

I didn’t go OUT to buy it, because I already had two that were being used on my computer as External drives that I could take with me, if I needed to use it with my laptop (on-the-go.

The model I use is: WDBAAF0010HBK.