Seagate 4t Expansion Portable Hard drive is not being reconisged in my WD TV Live device

WD Legacy Products WD TV Live Hub Discussions
1

Hi There,
I Bought a new 4t SEAGATE portable hard drive and I am unable to see it on my WD TV Live media player.
Hard Drive facts
Running System 32 Drivers (Factory)
File System is NTFS (Factory)

I have searched previous threads and so far

Scanned hard drive for errors.
Updated media player firmware to latest version,
Deleted the WD file on the Seagate portable drive,

Not very intelligent on computers so any help appreciated.

2

which version ? … just curious

3

Version 1.06.43_V

4

I suspected this (and reason i asked for your firmware revision number)

so, on with the bad news …

  1. You have posted in the Wrong Forum. This forum is for the WDTV Live Hub

Your WDTV Live is the older model released in 2009 (last firmware update before discontinuation was 2013) … the forum for that is the WDTV Live & Live Plus

  1. The older WDTV Live does not support GPT (GUID Partitions) which all Hard Drives now use as well as 4K Advanced Format Sectors (4096 bytes)

Solutions:

  1. Re-format/Re-Partition your new Seagate 4TB to Partition MBR (Master Boot Record) (512 bytes) but you’ll only be to use 2TB of the drive. MBR only supports a Maximum of 2TB Partitions.

  2. Buy a New Media Player that supports GPT (The WDTV Live Streaming Media Player 2011 does support GPT to my knowledge) … or most new Media Players Today will support it.

  3. Lastly … older 3TB and 4TB Hard drives made by Seagate and Western Digital used 512 Byte Emulation as a ‘work around’ during the transition to 4K Sectors to allow for greater than 2TB Capacity while still using MBR (for compatibiliy with Windows XP and older devices). You may be lucky to find a pre-owned one ebay … but they will be “Desktop Drives” and not Portable.

Side Notes:

I you want to read up more about this change in hard drive sectors / formats and partitions … here’s the nitty gritty

5

Joey,
You are a legend.
Thanks for your time and effort explaining this including wrong forum.
Not even interested in looking at remapping hard drives to suit etc.
Rather just buy a new media player to play new and old formatts. Old and new hard drives.
What would you recommend i buy to suit?
If you’re ever in brisbane australia i will buy you a beer

6

The 2 Media Players that i use that support large hdds (have a 4TB My Passport Ultra Portable plus a bunch of 3TB) and are fully GPT compatible are …

Raspberry Pi 3 (and my Raspberry Pi 2 worked fine as well) … great media player very stable (but you gotta be the tinkering type to put it all together … which i am :slight_smile:

Amlogic S905X Android Box … again, with some tinkering, i have Kodi LibreELEC booting off SD Card because Android Kodi does not support Auto Framerate Switching.

Running Kodi LibreELEC Distro on this thing is pretty awesome and plays 4K 3840x2160 10Bit HEVC (H.265) Video Perfectly. $56 AUD … bought it from Banggood

you can leave a 6 pack on my doorstep at Eight Mile Plains. Brisbane AU if you want to :slight_smile: