Seagate 3tb hard drive not recognized

Hey guys,

I recently got the new seagate 3tb goflex external hdd.  I was pretty excited about it until I plugged it into my WD TV (2nd gen) and got no response.  I updated the firmware but still nothing.  I then bought the WD HD TV Live Plus and still no response from the device.  I am wondering what solutions or feedback you all can give me?  I want to get these two devices to integrate and work together.  Is there a possible firmware upgrade coming soon?  Is there any other way that I can get the two to work together, via buying a component that will make my new seagate hdd a network drive?  Any input would be appreciated thanks

Matt

Welcome to the forums.

2TB is the max drive the Live can recognize.  It’s unlikely this will change soon (read: not until next year if ever).

1 Like

Thanks for your response.  Do you see any feasible solution to this, like possibly making a network drive or should i just trade it in for some 2 tbs.  I would really like to keep this drive but its useless to me if i cant use it the way i want to

You could try hooking it up to your PC and sharing it on the network.  

The Live doesn’t need to deal with the hardware aspect, and since Windows will be able to read and address the drive, it should have no issue sharing it.

Doesn’t cost you anything to try and it could work as a temporary solution until the WD techs patch in support for larger HDDs.  

I agree with Mike on his time estimate; we’re unlikely to see support for 3TB drives until the end of the year at the very earliest.

Make sure that you hook it up to Vista or 7.  XP will never recognize it.

I have the same problem. The WD salesperson told me that WD TV Live media player supports upto 8 TB. Do I have a the rights to sue WD for giving false information?

Yes.  Absolutely.   I think you should get started right away.   

I’m not a lawyer (although, truth be told, I DID play one on TV) but you can sue anyone for anything – there’s no such thing as “rights to sue”.  If you really mean do you have a good case against someone then the odds are probably no, but be aware that even if you did and you won a civil suit it’s extremely hard to collect unless you hire an attorney and have some deep pockets yourself (I suspect you’ll need around 10K for this kind of case).

Now the good news is that since we gave out that information we’ve been told the Live does indeed support larger drives (I still think 3TB is the max but I could be mistaken).  What is the size of the drive you want to hook up?

Other than the 1st generation WDTV, which has a 2TB volume limitation, there are no volume size limitations. However, we recently discovered an incompatibility issue (when connected via USB) with some newer devices that have 4k logical sectors. The 3TB Seagate drive might be such a device. 

This partially affects the 3TB My Book Essential - if it’s formatted for use with Windows XP, it’ll have 4k logical sectors and won’t be recognized by WDTVs. If it’s formatted for Vista or Win 7 and has 512 byte logical sectors, it will work normally (but won’t be recognized by Win XP).

This issue may be fixable via firmware update, but at this time I don’t know for sure if such a fix is possible or when/if such a fix might be released.

Hi Guy You’ve commented on this matter in response to some other queries and posts of mine already, so thanks for that.

I only just remembered that my PC is running Windows Vista, not XP, and the Seagate GoFlex 3Tb (STAC3000200) is recognised by the OS and works perfectly with it. The WD TV Live, however, does not recognise the drive whatsoever. Going off what you’ve written thus far, this sounds like a different/further connectivity problem - does that make sense to you? Ie - if the drive is recognised under Vista, does that mean it must be formatted with the 512 byte logical sectors, and if so, is there any other possible reason, or reasons, for the lack of recognition between the media player and the HDD?

To the OP, the drive *will* work via network shares but I find it suffers considerably even playing back 720p mkv files - lots of them break up at quite regular intervals, unfortunately.

There was another poster in a different thread who appeared to have had the WD TV Live recognise the GoFlex HDD but no ability to play the files, but I’ve not had any kind of comparable success when connected directly to the player.

tedtd wrote:

 if the drive is recognised under Vista, does that mean it must be formatted with the 512 byte logical sectors, and if so, is there any other possible reason, or reasons, for the lack of recognition between the media player and the HDD?

Vista and 7 can recognize both 512 byte logical sectors and 4k logical sectors, so there’s no guarantee there. There are other possible reasons, but my expertise doesn’t lie in hard drives, so I would prefer not to speculate and possibly say things that are completely wrong. We are investigating this issue, so I may be able to report back later with more information.

I found the same problem with my 3TB goflex.  The only solution I found was to partition the drive in half so both partitions are smaller than 2TB.  The WD HD TV Live Plus sees both partitions after you select USB1 and I’ve played video off of both partiions without any issues.

Dennis

1 Like

I have one of the Seagate drives also. 3TB. But I use mine wirelessly thru my computer. I have had a few things that do not recognize the drive as well. like some programs on the computer. Using windows 7 Ultimate and this box it works well (up until a couple of days ago anyhow, but other reasons than the drive) wirelessly and any kind of drive that hooks to computer. There is definatly some update need for that drive by several companies. I have never seen anything fixed here except by other users of the device. Nothing from WD. So good luck

You mean the Live can use BOTH partitions at a single drive – with standard firmware ???

Cocovanna

Nice one Vrath. I can’t quote your post for some reason, but your suggestion works.

I just need to figure out how to partition properly - using Vista’s MMC/Disk Management, the drive partitions into 3 separate chunks and only the first two (totalling 2Tb) can be formatted - the third has all the options greyed out and remains ‘unallocated’.

Nonetheless, I can confirm that, on firmware 1.0.42 (or is it 1.1.42; I forget), the two separate partitions definitely are recognized (although the folder icon is changed to a DVD or video spool or something on the WD TV) and both play okay when connected to a single USB port.

Hopefully this is something that WD can more easily rectify, in terms of making the WD player compatible with this HDD?

If RoofingGuy is reading this - I just wanted to note that the GoFlex won’t permit formatting in 512 byte clusters. It’s not an option on the drop down lists although it does become available when the partitioned drive is formatted, but then it returns an error message - something about the cluster size being too small for the partition, or words to that effect.

Now I’ve managed to get a 2Tb primary partition, but the unused 700Gb won’t allow anything be done to it.

I would post a screengrab if I knew how to do so.

Oh well, at least I can connect most of the drive to the WD player now!

I think you weren’t allowed to select 512-byte sectors because of the partition size, not because of the program.

NTFS only allows 2^32  clusters on a volume.  At 512 bytes per cluster, 2TB is the max you can get.

But the partition table is also limited to 2^32, so that’s why it won’t let you do anything with the “leftover” TB… there is no room in the partition table for anything else on the disc.

Which was an oversight of mine.  I’d seen 512-byte clusters suggested for 1 and 2 TB drives that weren’t being recognized by WDTV, but I’d forgotten that if you made a 512-byte-cluster partition on anything larger than 2TB, you’d be effectively turning it into a 2TB drive.

The only other thing I can suggest would be trying 1k clusters, so that you’re “allowed” to have up to 4TB of space in the partition table (no matter how you divide it up), but you’re not running into the 4k-cluster compatability issue.  I have no idea if that would work for you, but since I don’t want to see the 1TB going unused, if it can be avoided, it might be worth a try before you fill the disc up.

The only other option I can really think of is connecting the 3TB to a PC and using networking instead of USB.

I do have the drive connected via network shares but the instances of the file streaming breaking down or freezing completely is too often in my case. The same files work perfectly via hard-wire connection.

I’ll have to get a network cable and run that from my wireless N router to the WD TV and see if that improves things any but I’d just like to connect the **bleep** HDD to the player and be done with it as my first/most preferred choice.

I’ll give your other formatting/cluster solution a try too - when I’ve re-read it and understood it! I did try and format the 1.5TB partition under the 512 byte option and I’m pretty sure it kicked me out as well, but I’m not 100% sure.

I don’t suppose you know what is going on with my attempts to partition the drive as it is, do you? Using that Disk Management tool from Control Panel, I can ‘shrink volume’, ‘extend volume’ or ‘delete volume’.

I use the ‘shrink’ option and it comes up with a 1.4xxxxxxx (roughly 1.4TB) max size, and when I choose that, it leaves a further two areas, one of 650GB and one of 750GB or thereabouts. The 650GB one I have one option - make it a ‘simple volume’ which works, but the third partition won’t allow me to do anything with it.

For reasons I can’t explain, I can then delete the initial partition and eventually join the 1st and 2nd parts together, to make 2TB, but still that 750GB remains unmanageable.

I know this isn’t the right place to ask, per se, and I have asked Seagate too, but as you know what you’re talking about I hoped you wouldn’t mind :slight_smile:

Ah - your explanation about the ‘extra’ (over 2TB) space being, in effect, unusable, because of the partition table limits has sunk in.

So, it’s the 1 byte sectors or bust now! I’ll let you know what the outcome of that is.

Ps, my *bleep* from my previous post was my naughty usage of a similar word to that home of the humble beaver. This forum is very prim and proper!

In case you’re interested, the smallest cluster I can format under NTFS is 4096. The other options are 8192 and then 16k, 32k and 64k. That is for the 1.4TB partition or for the drive from the off (2.7TB)

After messing around and combining the first two partitions into one single ‘simple volume’, the max size is something like 2.00009TB and 512 byte clusters are selectable but then refused (“the cluster size is too small for the selected file system”).

I’ve tried reducing the volume to just under 2TB and get the same message.

I accept defeat and now just hope that WD can take pity on my plight…