WDTV Live External Hard Drive Advice

I’m currently considering upgrading my 300gb WD hard drive to something with more storage to use with my wdtv live (v1, non wireless).  I just wanted to get some advice on what most people use, or what is recommended.  I understand that there are factors with the WDTV when it comes to a hard drive larger than 2 tb, or that I may need to get something with an external power supply to avoid stutter.  I have come across the link where a list of devices compatible with the wdtv is provided, but I wanted to just make sure I’m on the right path.  So far the one I’m considering is the WD Elements 2tb hard drive.  I like the WD Passport hard drives because the smaller profile, but I’m unsure if you can use a power adapter with them.

Any thoughts?

Self powered (USB powered) harddrives don’t cause movies/videos to “stutter” *

I happily used a 500gig Seagate usb drive on my original WDTV HD Player (Gen1) for about 2 years without any “stutter” *

Right now, i use a few Western Digital Elements 1TB USB powered drives on the WDTV Live Hub … no stutter *

WD Elements 2TB should be fine, however i would follow a WD rep (GuyWD) advice posted here… (2nd post from the bottom)

http://wdtvforum.com/main/index.php?topic=6355.0 

* Tested with uncompressed Blu-Ray rips and full 1080p hd Mkv

Ok, that’s good to know.  I’m just going off of what I’ve read regarding people’s experiences with using the WDTV and external hard drives.  I primarily play MKV files, so if you are successful in playing 1080p MKVs while using a hard drive that is USB powered, it sounds like I shouldn’t have a problem.

Thank you for the link also, I’ll look into the option of shrinking the disk space to make sure it gets detected.  It’s a shame that it’s necessary to do that.