Copying large files to USB drive attached to WDTV over network

I’ve seen a lot of people having a similar issue to myself with the WDTV units. So I have a WDTVLIVE device on the network (everything is wired in my case so no wireless) and I have attached a 1TB Lacie USB drive to the WDTV device and I want to copy files from my PC to this device which appears in explorer.

What happened was that when copying large files >2gb to the WDTV network share from my Windows 7 (x64 in my case) PC then explorer seemed to “hang” and/or the transfer would time out and ethen usually explorer reports that it is having problems seeing the share and the file didn’t copy.

There are a lot of suggested “fixes” like

  • Using TCPOptimizer to “fix” the networking on windows 7/XP etc.

  • Ditching the factory firmware and switching to WDLXTV then formating the external drive as ext3 and/or forgetting samba and enabling ssh and copying via ftp etc.

  • Using external utilities such as teracopy etc.

I’m interested to know if anyone else was able to solve this problem the same way I did by simply reformatting the external USB from a Windows 7 PC as NTFS but setting the allocation unit size to 8192 bytes (note the default is 4096). I then plugged it back into the WDTV and I was  able to copy very large files at a respecatable ~10MB/sec to the share from my PC. FYI I also tried an allocation unit size of 64K but had the same problems as I did with the default of 4k.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/314878 “The Default Cluster Size for the NTFS and FAT File Systems:”

There is an old post here http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=1126478 that suggests a similar fix to enable the WDTV to actually see 3rd party drives >500GB

Hope this helps someone because I read a lot of dead-end posts regarding this topic.

2 Likes

Thank you very much for your contribution, most Users will find this information quite helpful.

Regards,

This worked for me like a charm.

I was having the same problem with Windows 7 64bit and a 1 TB iomega USB disk attached to the WDTV Live.

Thanks for sharing this simple solution to an annoying problem.

The access speed of the hard drive comes at a price, that is why Microsoft set the default at 4096 bytes. When storing large files, 8192 bytes is the most efficient storage method. Be aware that increasing the allocation unit size from 4096 to 8192 bytes will also increase the storage size. It becomes very apparent with DVDs and blurays that contain a lot of low byte or dummy sectors the storage capacity on the hard drive will suddenly disappear. Defragmenting your hard drive on a Windows box after copying using Defraggler will also speed up the hard drive seek and access time.

Thank you for your post that saved my

I had exactly the same problem as you

  • Slow networks,
  • Transfer files to crash on a higher 1.7Go,
  • stuttered in video and audio playback of avi or mkv file of all type (large or small)

my 2 WD 500 GB Each one was, one NTFS formatted by default so 4096 and one in 64k, I was formatting is Windows 7 in 8096 is working again normally and all since I won transfer speed networks

than,k

I even planned to change hardware and firmware so brand deteriorate more in short time
In fact I expect to see more because they only add features that did not help, instead of going to the point, as earlier in the product line that targets the heart of things and not the appearance and gadgets

Merci pour ton poste qui ma sauver

j’avais exactement les mêmes probléme que toi

  • lenteur réseaux,
  • transfert qui plante sur des fichiers supérieur a 1.7Go,
  • et sacadent video et audio sur la lecture de fichier avi ou mkv de tous type (gros ou petit)

mes 2 WD de 500 Go chaqu’un étais, l’un formatter en ntfs par défaut donc 4096 et l’autre en 64k, je l’est est formatter par windows 7 en 8096 est depuis tous refonctionne normalement et j’ai gagné en vitesse de transfert réseaux

J’avais même prévu de changer de matériel et de marque tellement les firmwares se dégrader de plus en plus au court du temps
D’ailleurs j’attends de voir la suite car ils ne font qu’ajouter des fonctions qui ne serve a rien, à la place d’aller à l’essentiel, comme au début de cette gamme de produit qui cibler le fond des choses et non l’apparence et les gadgets