2TB Elements Not Working w/OPPO Blu ray Player

I have over 15 2TB Element HDs that work with my OPPO Player. The last 2 I recently brought will not be recognized. Windows recognizes them and I can create ISO files. When I plug them in to the player it doesn’t see the drives. On the back of the 2 drives there are markings that were never on my other ones . It says EAC and looks like an address in the Netherlands. I have always purchased from Amazon here in the US. Is this the new norm for these drives? None of my other Elements have these markings.

Check your HDD’s for what Partitioning they are using

I’ll take a guess that your 15 2TB Working HDD’s are MBR Partitioned

and your 2 New / Non Working are GPT (GUID) Partitioned … (Which almost all New WD HDD’s are factory partitioned)

if that’s the case … then you’ll have to convert or format your 2 new HDD’s from GPT to MBR.

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Thanks! I’ll give it a go when I get home from work and let you know.

Just an update. You are correct. The new drive IS GPT. Wasn’t expecting that. My OPPO doesn’t support that. Only MBR. I’ll have to transfer the stuff off the drive to a new one and see if I can convert it to MBR. Why WD changed it I have no idea. I won’t be using them anymore I guess. Shame because I love these drives.

The Entire hard drive industry has been transistioning towards GPT (GUID) and the use of 4K Sectors.

Which ? Hard drives ? … i guess you’re gonna need a stack of DVD-RW’s then :wink:

Joking … but it won’t matter if you switch brands, the entire hard drive industry is doing it now eg. retiring MBR and using GPT

Actually it might be easier to starting burning Blu rays. If I update the firmware on my OPPO I’ll lose the ability to play my Blu ray ISOs that are on all my drives. The newer OPPOs can handle GPT but my BDP-93 can’t. So it comes down to either finding something that can play Bluray ISOs or burning discs again. Thanks for the awesome info. You’ve been a great help!

My Raspberry Pi 3 can apparently play Bluray ISO [With Limited Menu Support]

(haven’t tried it, but i have tried DVD ISO … that works fine)

RPi3 also supports GPT

Thanks. I’ll look into it. I have heard of the RPI3. I heard the Dune
players are good for Blu ray ISOs also but they are expensive. I just got a
Toshiba 2TB drive and it’s MBR. I’m transferring the ISOs from the GPT WD
to MBR Toshiba and then I’m going to try and change the GPT to MBR. That
way I can at least use the drive.

if you’re comfortable with command line … follow this guide to convert GPT to MBR

http://stepcoder.com/Articles/10067/convert-gpt-drive-into-mbr-using-command-prompt-cmd

MBR … will be fine as long as the hard drives you’re using a 2TB or less

Any hard drive over 2TB must be partitioned GPT … that’s the biggest limitation of MBR, if you buy a 4TB hdd and partition it MBR, then you’ll only have 2TB available.

One thing before anyone say’s “i have an older 4TB HDD and it’s MBR” :confused:

There’s a easy answer to that … during the transistion period to 4K Sectors hard drive manufacturers (Western Digital, Seagate etc) used 512 byte Sector Emulation on hard drives over 2TB … so these older hard drives 3TB, 4TB can be MBR and used with older operating systems. eg Windows XP 32-Bit only supports MBR

But, this 512 byte Sector Emulation was phased out, and any new hard drives will be 4K Sectors

Zidoo X9S Media Player has support for Bluray ISO + Menus (IGS+ BDJ)

and they are bit cheaper.

Unfortunately my OPPO BDP-93 won’t accept any drive higher than 2TB. And
now I know it wont accept GPT. I looked into the Zidoo but it was
unavailable when I clicked on the purchase. It went to Amazon. I’ll check
ebay.

i’ve bought plenty of stuff from banggood.com (china) without any issues :slight_smile:

current status of the Zidoo is “Under Restocking … Available Soon”

Thanks! Found on ebay(also China) $129.00

Didn’t even take 10 seconds to convert GPT to MBR. Awesome. At least now I can use the drive. Thanks again!