Another hard drive not recognised

I have a Seagate 3Tb drive. It was recognised this morning by the WDTV box.

I removed it and my other hard drive to delete duplicate movies via my tablet.

Having reconnected both to the WDTV box, my Seagate 3Tb is no longer recognised whilst the other box (Buffalo 300Gb) is.

I saw one person suggesting reconnecting to the tablet, removing the .wd_tv folder, reconnecting to the box and then rebooting the box. It’s still not recognised.

Can anyone help or is this a known issue without a solution?  Thanks.

if you have access to a PC i would connect the Seagate to it and run a chkdsk

also, next time you want to delete files why not use the WDTV to do it ?

Thanks Joey.

I have run chkdsk but, when I connect it back up to the WD box, the light flashes on the WD box and the Seagate drive as it attempts to connect.  So, it seems to recognise there is a USB connected but gets no further.

dunno what’s happening ?  are there any PC or Tablet files on the HDD ?  ie. Non-Media Files ?

if so move them off or delete them from the HDD

you’ve tried the side and back usb ports on the WDTV ?

I’ve removed every file apart from the video files. All the backdrop files, jpgs, XML files are gone.

On reconnection, the WD light flashes as does the Seagate light and then nothing. I’m pretty sure the WD box is the issue.

When I reset the WD box, I noticed the look of the screen is completely different. I used to have a ribbon bar at the bottom with Setup, Video, Photos etc but now I only get 10 large icons (AOL HD, iPlayer, music, videos…) and the three options at the top (Services, Alerts and Setup).

I’m using firmware 2.02.32 and it says there’s no update available. Does this help at all or have I bored you all?

The Buffalo drive is VFAT whilst the undetected Seagate is NTFS. This hasn’t changed since it last worked a few days ago.

beamsley wrote:
When I reset the WD box, I noticed the look of the screen is completely different. I used to have a ribbon bar at the bottom with Setup, Video, Photos etc but now I only get 10 large icons (AOL HD, iPlayer, music, videos…) and the three options at the top (Services, Alerts and Setup).

That’s because firmware 2.02.32 introduced a *new* interface called “Grid

If you want the old interface (Mochi) then go to … Setup > Appearance > User Interface Themes > Mochi

Also, when you say you “reset” the box … i’m assuming you did a “factory reset” correct ?

Setup > System > Device Reset > Reset All Settings Back to Factory Default

 

Thanks Joey. I didn’t realise it’s a legacy product…

Hi Beamsley,

You don’t say how you are disconnecting the drive from the WDTV or the PC so I’m just checking that you are removing it correctly.

Before removing the drive from the WDTV you need to press the eject button on the remote, highlight which drive you want to remove, press OK, then when the green tick appears, press OK again. Now you can safely remove the drive. You can’t just pull the cable out of the usb connection as this will set a ‘dirty’ flag on the drive that can stop it from being recognised by the WDTV.

To clear the ‘dirty’ flag you run chkdsk on the drive on the PC. It will usually say that it found no errors, but it still clears the flag.  Before removing the drive from your PC, you need to use the “Safely Remove Hardware” function. Did you do that after you had run chkdsk? If not, then you are immediately setting the ‘dirty’ flag again when you pull the cable out.

Give that a try.

Hi ronmaz.

The simple answer is No to all the above. I didn’t even notice the Eject button until now. So, I’m running chkdsk to see if that will sort it out. Thanks for this mate.

I’ll update the thread as soon as it’s done. Been running for 2 hours so far…

Many hours on and chkdsk has only processed 281 of the files on my 3Tb external hard drive. Any thoughts on how this can be speeded up or is it simply a waiting game?

Maybe these are 281 of the films I have on the drive and it’ll soon be done

Hmmm, I’ve got a 2TB external drive with thousands of files on it and an error check only takes 2 minutes max.  Don’t choose the bad sector check if it gives you that option.

Here’s what I do:

In windows explorer, right click on the drive letter of the external drive, then click Properties;

Select the Tools Tab;

Click the ‘Check’ button;

You’ll probably see a message saying “You don’t need to scan this drive”, but click on the “Scan Drive” button anyway.

When finished use the Safely Remove Hardware function before removing the usb cable.

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Your sure you’re not doing a defrag on the drive? It’s not really necessary with NTFS and it can take ages if the drive is almost full.

Ok, so Je Suis In Happy Man!!

What I did wrong:

  • When removing the external hard drive from the WD box, I didn’t use the Eject button on the remote
  • When trying to fix the drive, I right clicked the external hard drive from within Windows Explorer > Properties >Tools > Error Checking … Check Now, I also checked ‘Scan for and attempt recovery of bad sectors’ and this takes perhaps days!

What I should have done:

  • When removing the disk from the WD box, use the Eject button on the remote
  • If I need to Chkdsk, only tick the default ‘Automatically fix file system errors’.

5 seconds later, it had finished on my 3Tb external hard drive. I replugged it into the WD box and all is good again.

Thank you all for your help.

so chkdsk fixed the problem ?

as i 1st suggested  http://community.wd.com/t5/WD-TV-Live-Streaming/Another-hard-drive-not-recognised/m-p/842357#M34934

Personally … i run chkdsk from Command Line

eg. Click “Start”   type cmd  then  chkdsk /f D:      ("D’ is the drive letter of my HDD … replace it with your drive letter)