WD My Passport Not Recognised By PVR

There did not seem to be a category for my enquiry so I hope that this forum can help.

My WD My Passport 1 TB hard drive is not recognised by my Topfield PVR.

I did contact WD Technical Support but they were not helpful.

Although I advised that my WD Elements 640GB external drive and other much smaller USB devices including several SanDisk and Sony Flash Drives were recognised and worked well in my Topfield PVR, their response was that the WD My Passport was only tested for and required to work on a computer. If it worked on other devices that was a bonus.

When I purchased the WD My Passport I had an expectation that it would work on other devices and not just my computer.

Can someone advise if they are aware of any procedure that might help my PVR to recognise the My WD My Passport?

All your “working” hard drives and flash drives will be MBR (Master Boot Record) Partition Table

The WD Passport 1TB … and all “New” WD hard drives are GPT (GUID Partition Table)

Backup your Passport data … re-format the drive (whatever file system is supported by your Topfield PVR eg FAT32, exFAT, NTFS etc) and choose MBR Partition Style when formattiing.

I’m 99.99% that will solve the problem. (Note: MBR only supports up to 2TB … your 1TB will be fine)

Never assume that … WD hard drives (and other Brands) are only tested with Operating Systems (Win/iOS/Linux etc)

They can’t test them with the hundreds and thousands of PVR’s, Smart TV’s, Media Player Device’s around the world.

Just as the manufacturers of the hundreds and thousands or PVR’s, Smart TV’s, Media Player Device’s around the world don’t test them with every hard drive out there.

Hi Joey,

Thank you for your suggestion.

My PVR supports NTFS and the WD My Passport drive is currently NTFS.

If I try to reformat it, it states the file system is NTFS (Default) and the Allocation unit size is 4096 bytes. There is an option to have exFAT with an Allocation unit size of 256 kilobytes, but there is no reference to a MBR Partition Style.

Can you please advise how I can reformat to NTFS with an MBR Partition Style?

Taurus47

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There’s lots of info how to partition a hard drive MBR and convert from GPT to MBR if you google search

Here’s the simplest guide i found … with pictures

https://aps2.toshiba-tro.de/kb0/HTD5103Q20001R01.htm