WD live plus not working with 3tb hard drive

WD Legacy Products WD TV Live & Live Plus
1

When I plug in my brand-new, formatted (contains media) drive into the WD live plus player the drive isn’t detected.

I am running the newest firmware (updated last night).

The same sata enclosure with a different drive (2tb) works just fine and both drives work fine when plugged into a computer (can be detected, formatted, and used).

Thoughts, suggestions?

2

Really hoping I can find a solution here. 

3

Hello,

some systems have problems to mount drives greater than 2TB, even when they are normally able to handle greater amounts of data.

The reason is, that the interface count space above 2TB with negative values and so the drive seems to be completely (100%) filled up with data.

Maybe the WD have this problem too.

Lupunus

4

ebacherdom wrote:

When I plug in my brand-new, formatted (contains media) drive into the WD live plus player the drive isn’t detected.

 

I am running the newest firmware (updated last night).

 

The same sata enclosure with a different drive (2tb) works just fine and both drives work fine when plugged into a computer (can be detected, formatted, and used).

 

Thoughts, suggestions?

How do you have the drive formatted?

5

NTFS

6

There’s only a couple of things I can think of to look at:

  1. Are you allowing time for the WD TV to index the drive?  If you have it loaded with files it may take longer before it shows up.
  2. Is there an issue with the enclosure and the 3TB drive?  You’d have to try another enclosure to check that.
  3. Are you using any kind of USB hub or other device to connect the drive to before connecting it to the Live Plus? 
  4. Does the external enclosure require any special driver that Windows can download but the Live Plus can’t?
7

1.  Yes, lots of time.

2.  Enclosure is good with other drives; and enclosure and drive is good on other computers.

3.  NO USB hub, directly plugged into unit.

4.  Again, the enclosure works fine with a <3tb drive installed in it, so enclosure function is a non-issue.

8

I wouldn’t know what to tell you then.  I’m still leaning towards it being a combination issue of the drive and enclosure on the Live Plus.  The only way you could know for sure is by trying another enclosure, or a usb adapter, and see if the drive shows up with that.

Or, unless there’s an issue with some corruption on the drive, and it’s affecting the Plus from being able to read the drive.  I’d try another enclosure first.

9

I have tried 2 other enclosures; both show the same symptoms.  Not the enclosures fault (it works on other machines), and not the drive’s fault. 

10

And the drive is brand new out of the box as of two weeks ago - no corruption evident or likely.

11

Well, if several of those enclosures won’t work, I guess all that can be done is not add that enclosure to the list of USB devices known to work with the Live/Live Plus.

12

I was unclear.  I have tried several different brands of enclosures, not several instances of the same product.  After the first one didn’t work I have tried two more (different manufacturers, and with this drive they also don’t work).

13

Well, other than the fact that you didn’t really answer Bill’s question #4, there’s not much else anyone else can tell you.

It appears anyone buying an actual 3TB external drive, whether from WD or from Seagate, has had no issues under the patched firmware.

That’d seem to indicate that the Live/Live Plus firmware is capable of working properly with USB drives greater than 2TB.

Now, if it doesn’t play nicely when a 3TB internal drive is placed in some enclosures, that tends to point to the enclosures themselves, since the SATA drives are basically identical to the ones inside the extrernal drives known to work.

It still seems likely that the enclosures have loaded a driver on the PC, in order to bridge from the GPT SATA drive to the PC itself.

It can still be WD’s bug, as well.  I’m certainly not holding WD faultless and blameless.  But it sure seems more like it’s the enclosures and they need drivers to work over USB with large drives.

What happens if you attach one to a printer’s USB port?  Will it recognize the drive, like the PC does, or will it refuse to see it, like the WDTV?

14

I didn’t need to answer #4, because the SAME ENCLOSURES LOADED WITH OTHER DRIVES WORKED FINE.  IF it was a problem of a driver being loaded like you suggest, the enclosure wouldn’t work no matter what the drive size, but that is not what I have observed.

15

No, you say the same enclosure works fine with a 2TB drive and the Live/Live Plus.  That immediately points to an MBR/GPT issue of one kind or another.

Many enclosures weren’t designed to originally work with large drives, and support for GPT was added after-the-fact.

So, if the enlcosure(s) has(have) loaded a driver on the PC to enable it to use GPT drives, then with no way to load the same driver onto other devices, that enclosure simply will not be usable with a GPT drive on _ anything _ that can’t load the driver, be it a media player or a printer or a TV or a BluRay player.  It wouldn’t need drivers for smaller drives.

That’s why I suggested connecting the enclosure(s) with a 3TB drive inside, to another device other than an actual PC or a WDTV.

Because, other than asking the manufacturer for confirmation that it will work with 3TB drives with other non-PC devices, that’s about all that can be done to try and figure out where the conflict lies.

But, if you don’t need to do any of that, then there’s not really anything else anyone can do to try and help.