3TB External drive

[Papagaj]

Greetings everyone

I recently bought WD TV LIVE and i just love that. Great product. Now using latest firmware i believe it is 1.04 or something like that.

The only downside is wi-fi adaptor support. Had to buy Dlink DWA-131 because Belkin F6D4050 in V. 2 just  isn’t recognized Well anyways…

I’m having very hard time finding WD My Book Essential 3TB in stock. They are sold out out everywhere over here but SEAGATE FreeAgent GoFlex Desk 3000GB is in stock. So my question is… will it be recognized and work with WD TV LIVE?

[RoofingGuy]

I believe (from previous threads) that people have gotten Seagate 3GB drives to work, but if I remember correctly, there was a whole lot of monkeying around trying to format/partition to get it to actually show up.

[TonyPh12345]

Have looksee at this list:

http://www.google.com/products/catalog?q=WDBACW0030HBK&hl=en&safe=strict&cid=9701777521932815087&os=sellers#

[tedtd]

RoofingGuy is correct; the WD TV Live won’t recognise the GoFlex STAC 3000 hard drive in its native format.

I got around this by using a third-party (Acronis Disk Director) formatting/partitioning tool to partition the drive into two separate sections.

I have Windows Vista as my OS - I think Bill the Community Manager mentioned something about that drive not being recognised under XP but I might be wrong about that!

Anyway, formatted into the correct sector type, my TV Live happily recognises both partitions off a single USB connection.

Alternatively, if the drive is recognised by your computer, you can stream via network shares with no problems out of the box.

[Guy_K]

Please see this KBA:  http://wdc.custhelp.com/cgi-bin/wdc.cfg/php/enduser/std_adp.php?p_faqid=5767&p_created=1288798824&p_sid=shsrFCgk&p_accessibility=0&p_redirect=&p_srch=1&p_lva=&p_sp=cF9zcmNoPTEmcF9zb3J0X2J5PSZwX2dyaWRzb3J0PSZwX3Jvd19jbnQ9MSwxJnBfcHJvZHM9JnBfY2F0cz0mcF9wdj0mcF9jdj0mcF9wYWdlPTEmcF9zZWFyY2hfdGV4dD01NzY3&p_li=&p_topview=1

[tedtd]

Hey - that is great news, Guy. Thanks for that.

I’d have held back from purchasing the partitioning software but a poster on here (mkelley, I think, but am not sure) suggested it’d be highly unlikely (if ever) that WD would address this.

Unfortunately I’m kind of stuck as I can’t really back up my data from that drive unless I buy another one. I don’t suppose the CONVERT facility can be used instead of a full format?

It’s still great news going forward, though, and proves that WD do look out for their customers.

[tacky187]

Greetings.

Is there a fresh link to that KBA article?  When I click it, I get a “Permission Denied” and “This answer is no longer available” message.

I just got a GoFlex 3TB drive for Christmas and would love to see the proper way to get it to work.

[richUK]

See this also:

http://community.wdc.com/t5/General-Discussions/Important-Notice-Regarding-Single-USB-Drives-Greater-than-2-TB-s/td-p/103114

[tacky187]

Thanks for the link.  I also found a KBA that stated no drive above 2 GB is supported and it may cause corruption. 

My follow up question is that a drive or partition limitation?  I don’t mind splitting this thing up…  Also, what is the correct “sector size” to format to?

[pobs123]

It is a limitation on the size of the partition. 

I have a WD 3 TB and I created 2 x 1.5 TB partitions, and works fine on WDTV Live, and WDTV Live Hub.

I created mine with 1024 byte sector size, but it probably was not necessary because the partition was not over 2 TB.  Just make sure you don’t format with 4096 (4K) sector size, because WDTV will not recognize this.