Largest external drive that works?

WD Legacy Products WD TV Live Hub Discussions
1

Has anyone hooked up a 8TB external drive to the live hub? If so, which drive? Did it work?

2

Hi,

As far as I know the WD TV Live Hub supports up to 3TB external drives.

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3

I’m using a 4TB drive without issue
 some here are using 5-6TB. Has anyone tried 8TB?

4

I have the same problem, except that it didn’t cross my mind to check this BEFORE buying the external drive.

So I’ve bought 8TB My Book and transferred all the files from 2TB Elements (it took 3 days via USB 2.0!!) and voila - Live Hub doesn’t recognize 8TB My Book!

I,m gutted


5

Don’t give up so easy. Plug the drive into your pc and run a check disk. Instructions below. I had the same issue.

open the Command Prompt, type “cmd” on the Windows 8 Start screen and click “Command Prompt.” Type the following into Command Prompt and press “Enter” to run the disk check: chkdsk /f E: Replace the letter E with the letter corresponding to your external hard drive.

After you’ve scanned the drive. Shut down the pc. Wait till hard drive stops spinning. THEN remove the drive and hook it up to your WD Player. Once in your WD player select the drive with the red key and everything should be peachy. Let me know! I’m interested in knowing since I need to upgrade shortly as well.

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6

Thanks very much for your reply Sol_searchin!

Unfortunately, it doesn’t work. To be honest, I don’t understand how could it work? It seems to me that all that it does is checking the sectors on the disk; it doesn’t change anything, so the drive behaves exactly the same after the check. But I’m no expert so I may be wrong on this.

However, during the check I noticed one thing: the drive is formatted in exFAT. Could it be that the drives connected to WDTV Live Hub must be formatted in another system (NTFS)?

Thanks once again!

7

Well, it seems so: Error

“The WD TV Live Hub Media Center, WD TV Live Streaming Media Player, WD TV Live (WDBAAx0000NBK) HD Media Player, WD TV Live Plus HD Media Player, and the WD TV HD Media Player (Gen 2) supports NTFS, FAT32, HFS and HFS+ file systems for media playback.”

Now, I don’t want to reformat the drive in NTFS, then wait for another three days to copy all the files from the old 2TB drive, and when it’s done connect the drive to Live Hub only to discover that it doesn’t work because of something else.

Also, if WD as manufacturer pre-formatted the drive in exFAT instead of NTFS, maybe it had good reason for that (efficiency, logevity,
?).

All suggestions appreciated.

8

ExFAT isn’t supported. People on here has always had issues with unable to detect with that format. You want NTFS. Unfortunately I think you’re screwed on this one. You’ll have to transfer out the files and reformat. The reason I recommended chkdsk is that WD is finicky. If it detects errors or issues it won’t show up on your WD player. It’s always worth it to run it after transferring your content and before plugging it into the WD player.

9

OK, thanks a lot!

Now I just hope that it won’t be that picky about the size (no pun intended!).

Well, the sooner i start
:weary:

10

Just transfer out the files. Format. Transfer 1 movie. Run chkdsk and plug it into the WD player. If that movie shows up, you’re golden. That way you don’t have to waste too much time if it doesn’t work. I have a feeling you’ll have zero issues though. Keep me posted though.

11

I will.

Thanks, mate!

12

Good news!! I reformatted the disk in NTFS (it was painstakingly slow on my PC) and after it was done I copied a few films on it and hooked it in WDTV Live Hub. It works perfectly!

The disk is 8TB WD My Book and it was factory formatted in exFAT, the system that WDTV doesn’t recognize.

The size of the disk itself doesn’t seem to be an issue at all.

If anything happens in the future (problems with media reproduction?) I’ll keep you posted.

Very special thanks to Sol_searchin. Without your advice on checking the disk via Command prompt I wouldn’t notice the format system and thus find the solution.

13

i’ll be curious to see what what happens when you fill up over 4TB of data on the 8TB

copying a ‘few films’ onto the 8TB is not really a conclusive test of ‘it works perfectly’

older wdtv media players which firmware did not support ‘large hard drives’ will actually ‘work’ with large hard drives 
 but WD warned in doing so, there is a risk of data corruption

make sure to have a backup of your films 
 ‘just in case’ it goes pear shaped

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I know. We’ll see how it unfolds. For now, I’m just happy that WD TV recognizes the disk.

Also, there is the question of file system. As I mentioned above, maybe WD had a good reason for pre-formatting this drive in exFAT instead of NTFS. All the external disks I’ve bought before were WD’s and all were pre-formatted in NTFS. But none of them was larger than 2 TB. This one (8 TB) is the first one that was pre-formatted in exFAT.

If anybody knows more about it, I’de be grateful if s/he would share with the rest of us


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That won’t take too long. I’ll keep you posted.

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Your data doesn’t just corrupt due to disk size. The drive will either recognize or won’t. It is that simple. Corruption happens when you use non powered external hard drives. 8tb externals will be powered. There won’t be any issues if the drive and it’s capacity are recognized. People on here have 5-6 TB of content on there 5-6tb drives without issue.

To add, WD warned against using SMR drives. SMR drives aren’t recommended for large capacity streaming. Only Seagate manufactures them, so stay away from those and you’ll be fine.

17

Exfat makes it usable with macs. That’s most likely why WD formatted this way from factory. NTFS is better anyways. Go into disk manager on your WD and see if it recognizes all 8tb. If it does you’re golden. I’d highly recommend running chkdsk before plugging into the WD and after transferring your movies.

Oh and which 8tb drive did you use ? ( model number pls ). Did you use the newer model WD externals? They seem to work really well ( and fast ) on the WD live hub.

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Model number of 8 TB My Book is WDBBGB0080HBK - EESN.

Before this one I had 2 TB Elements (WDBAAU0020HBK - EESN) and also 2 TB My Passport Ultra (WDBBKD0020BBY-EESN). I’ve never used Passport Ultra with Live Hub, though.

19

Nice! That’s a good drive. It’s the newer model which is very fast compared to the older models. Usb powered drives like the passport always corrupt. I would avoid using those on the WD.

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Thanks a lot!

We’ll see how it will do in the long run.