My passport 4TB hard drive not working on my Samsung and LG tv

[kunle.oni]

Good day,

I got a brand new 4TB WD my passport external hard drives, to my greatest surprise when i got home from work i plugged it to the Samsung TV and it didn’t read the drive. The device says ‘No media connected’.
Please i would love to know what to do so make the TVs read the drive cause if it doesn’t it would mostly be a failure cause part of the reason why i bought the drive initially was to dedicate like 2TB for my movie collections and the others for my applications and documents.

Looking forward to get a response on this.

Best regards,

Kunle Oni

[DarrenHill]

There are two usual reasons for this:

Power
Drive format

Many TVs USB ports don’t give enough power to support an external drive like a MP. The solution for that is to get a powered hub and connect that in between the MP and the TV, so it can power the drive.

Also many “smart” TVs require certain formatting on the drive (usually FAT32), and your MP will almost certainly be formatted as NTFS (that’s how the non-Mac ones are supplied).So you may well need to reformat it to FAT32 to have any chance of working, but that too has limitations on the size of files that it can support (2GB) which depending on exactly what you want to play might also be a deal-breaker.

Have a look at the documentation for your TV and it should tell you what drive formats it supports. I know my JVC at home would need FAT32 if I chose to use a drive on it that way for example.

[kunle.oni]

Thank You Daren.

I think i would try to get a power hub and try that. I have actually saw the filling system online on various forums while researching for the solutions.

The MP has NTFS while i guess the Tv can only read FAT32 or exFAT, because of the limitations of the size file of FAT32 and exFAT i have been thinking of how to partition the drive (If possible) have ‘2TB’ for NTFS and ‘2TB’ for the other filing system. But i have read that for that to happen i would need a third party application.

I have checked and i haven’t seen any application, i just want to have at least half of the volume of the drive for media, which would be used on TV.

Best Regards,

Kunle Oni

[DarrenHill]

It is possible, but as you say you need another application/pc.

Personally I tend to use GParted on Linux (most often on a Pi) but there’s also Partition Magic or MiniTool Partition Wizard on a PC. I have a 2TB drive that’s split into two partitions (the original NTFS one plus a new EXT4 one having shrunk the NTFS and created it) done with GParted and it worked fine (although took a few hours to do, done overnight).

As always be careful when doing it though as it’s a dangerous operation (make sure you’re working on the correct drive, and then make doubly sure again before doing anything!).

[Mrnathanwilliam]

Did the powered hub work?

I have seagate 2TB which is formatted as NTFS and works perfectly on all my TV’s

My 4TB passport ultra is also formatted as NTFS however is not showing in any TV.

[DoubleA]

Hi. I had a similar issue and ultimately discovered that most TV’s will not read any drive over 1TB. For some it is no more than 32G or 64G.
Once I realized this and tried smaller drives, everything was fine. I use a Samsung USB stick that is 64G. My TV would read mp4 files fine, I didn’t have to convert them to a FAT format or an AVI.
So, before getting too involved with formats, try a smaller drive first.

[TBone68]

I had a 2TB with bluetooth capacity that was networked and working fine. One day it would not allow me to add any movies to it despite there being ample room. I also had another old WD device prior to that. I decided to go big and get a 8TB - I am disheartened to see that my LG which is about 5 years old does not recognize it all. My Samsung which is about 3 years old only recognizes 1/10 th of the movies -even those that were recognized on the previous 2TB. It is disheartening that the technology has not advanced to plug and play. Stating to move to a smaller file or purchase another device to make it work seems unacceptable as a customer. All of the movies do show on the computer as I was moving the files over.
Urghhh. Constructive Criticism is asked for. Read the various posts regarding the product not meeting customer needs and address those needs - not just for me - but for all. These concerns are not new nd yet the problem persists.