I currently own the newest Wd Tv Live with the latest firmware and was wondering if anyone has tried using a 6tb drive through the USB port?
I want to purchase a WD Red 6tb Hard drive and install it into an external drive housing (self powered) and connect it to the USB port on the unit. Has anyone tried this? Is the capacity too much for the WD to handle? I don’t want a NAS setup due to metadata and Cache issues. I would like to store my media library on the 6tb drive and use it directly from the unit. I’ve used smaller capacity drives in the past connected to the device and it worked pretty good.
Please any feed back would be greatly appreciated.
A) Looking at the spec sheet, the drive requires 12VDC … so, it’s not gonna work with a “self powered enclosure” (you’ll need to buy an external AC powered enclosure)
This one listed claims to support a single HD up to 6tb. It also has a built in power supply and USB3.0. Although the WD TV Live doesn’t support USB3.0, it’s not a big deal on my end. The USB3.0 will come in handy when transferring files from my desktop to the drive.
Once powered by the enlcosure, and connected the USB cable to the WD TV Live, the question is would the unit recognise the 6tb drive.
Here is what I’ve set up… I use only 1TB drives and they work great. Just wanted to share that. I would think that our WD’s only look at the file list on the HD’s, but I am not real sure. I know that the larger drives take longer to spin up…
Yes I have contacted WD’s Tech Support, they can’t give me an answer, in fact the lady that i spoke with barely knows the difference between the WD TV models. So when she says that it may work, I take her advice with a grain of salt. I just dont want to shell out $300 on a Hard Drive that “may work”. I currently have close to 5tb of movies, Tv Shows and other videos that I would like to have on hand when I decide to switch on the device. I may just have to go with a 4tb drive as I already have one laying around and just prioritise what i want on there. The members on this forum have given confirmation of the unit reading from 4tb drives so at least i know that would be an option.
Will hold out for a week or so before i decide what i want to do in hopes of another member having tried a 6tb drive can confirm for me.
Big thanks to those that have responded with advice. I greatly appreciate it.
I feel your pain. It would be a pretty expensive “roll of the dice” to buy and try a 6TB drive.
I have been backing up my movies (complete with menus) on 1TB 3.5" drives. I currently have eleven of them containing just at 1,000. Several of my drives are going on four years old without a problem.
My logic in using the 1TB’s is mainly their speed to spin up, find, and play a movie. Sure they take up more room, but if one fails I have not lost 6TB of “stuff”. And hey, lost of HD’s give me grins…
The drives are labeled “DVD-A ~ DVD-K” and I have a XLS spreed sheet in alphabetical order with the movie’s info on it. It is on our iPad and iPod Touch for quick reference. And any field of the spread sheet can be searched.
Also, currently on Amazon a 1TB drive is $53.99. If you are a Prime member it is shipped free.
I apologize if I’ve muddied the water, just wanted to lay out some options… What ever you do I’m sure that you will have fun with the WD TV. I think it is the greatest since “sliced bread”…
Personally, i prefer WD Drives (have several of them 1TB - 3TB) … haven’t had any issues
I can’t argue with that statement…! WD markets wonderful drives and I’ve used several in the past. I just got hooked on the ones I mentioned. Being “A-type” person I like everything to match… Drives my wife crazy.
Thank you BetsyMePoocho and JoeySmyth for the help. I think that is my only option at this point. Fortunately I have some extra Hard drives laying around that I can use to catalog my videos. I’m sure at some point in the near future we would hear some feed back on user’s experiences with larger capacity drives. We can also bank on WD updating their firmware to possibly support them or even a Gen 4 model of the WD TV Live.
Will keep my eyes open on the forums and try to find someone who eventually “rolls the dice” for some clarity.
I too am curious whether my WD TV Live could recognize 6TB or greater drives. But come on folks, the newer highest capacity drives are always near the top of the price curve. Stay “small” and still win. As I’ve posted on another thread, I have 32TB of drives all visible from both my WD TV Live Hub and WD TV Live boxes (and from laptops and IPADs).
Sure - this can be done. I have 16TB of movies so far and - with occasional gotchas - it all works fine.
1TB internal drive in WD TV Live Hub
3TB external USB WD Elements drive plugged into the WD TV Live Hub. (I don’t use the 2nd USB port.)
4TB WD MyCLoud connected to my local network
3TB USB External hard drive plugged to back of the above MyCloud (some, but not all MyCloud have a USB port).
3TB WD MyCloud connected to my local network.
2TB WD My Book Live (older drive with essentially same capabilities as a MyCloud) connected to my local network.
That’s 16TB of movies, all available directly from the WD TV Live Hub. And each of the above drives has an equal capacity USB drive connected to my home PC, that serves as a backup for the main drives. All of the backup drive are visible on the network, so in theory, all 32TB of movies are viewable. In addition, a 2nd TV with an “empty” WD TV Live media player can also connect to and play any of the 16TB of movies. As can the home laptops and IPAD, which can “see” over Wi-Fi any of the 16TB of movies.
Both the WD TV Live Hub and the WD TV Live media player are (of course) also connected to local network.
Last year I advised that my WD My Book 4TB works with password encryption turned on fine with my WD TV Live SMP (Gen 3). I filled my 4TB up and so I came looking to see if the 6TB was compatible and came across this thread. Seems you wanted someone to take the plunge and let ya’ll know if it works, so I took the plunge (Fantastic consumer laws in Australia means if it didn’t work I can take it back to shop for full refund).
Anywho, IT WORKED! I have a WD My Book 6TB with a password set for the encryption and it works just dandy with my WD TV Live SMP (Gen 3) using the last version firmware 2.1.xx whatever it is because we all know 2.2.32 is broken. I also have network share set and over my home network I see the full 6TB as a share, and I share it across my network to my second WD TV Live SMP in my bedroom just fine.
There is one little quirk to note, and I think it is to do with having the password set, to get the WD unit to recognize the drive I have to turn the WD on FIRST then connect the USB for it to prompt me for the password, unlock and mount the drive. I only ever need to do this however for the first plug-in, one the drive is plugged in and unlocked it remains mounted and I only need to do that unplug, turn on and replug in if there is a power failure to either the USB or the WD drive and therefore I need to reenter the password (Protecting my content as it should).
So long story short YES IT WORKS and if at first it doesn’t detect the drive, keep the WD unit on, unplug the HDD USB cord and replug it in and it will see it.
I recently bought a 6tb WD My Book. The first time I tried it, it was not recognized by my WD TV Live. I then noticed that the drive came pre-formatted to exFAT. I reformatted to NTFS and it works perfectly. Apparently WD TV Live does not recognize drives that are formatted to exFAT.
I’ve had WD TV Live media players in my house for too many years. If it still works, keep it. I recently got a WD My Book 6TB recertified to use for films as my WD My Book 3TB was full.
The 6TB wasn’t recognised where the 3TB obviously was. I went through everything I could think of without success. I looked at the partition table MBR v GPT. The 3TB seemed to be MBR although I knew the max for MBR is 2TB.
Long story short, I used the WD quick formatter tool (Google it) to format the 6TB drive with Windows XP settings (not Vista & above), which formatted the drive as MBR 6TB. My WD TV Live recognised it but didn’t show the drive until I copied video files to it. Now working as expected. I tried everything else, this is the only solution that worked for me.
