WD TV Media Player with a 5TB My Book Hard Drive

WD Legacy Products WD TV Live & Live Plus
1

Good Day!

I have seen a few variations of this problem on the boards and on the net, but am unable to find one definitive answer to solve the issue.

I have a brand new WD My Book 5TB External Hard Drive which I have connected to my older WD Media Player (not the Live Version). The Media Player does not recognize the drive & just states “No Storage Present”

The Media Player is running the firmware version 1.03.01 & I have been hesitant to upgrade as it still works perfect with all existing and new storage devices I plug into it.

The WD Hard Drive has its own power supply & works fine with my PC’s, but the Media Player does not seem to like it too much. From what I have read, the larger size of this new HD may be the issue.

I have a smaller 2TB My Book which works fine so am wondering if there is a workaround to get the 5TB running with it.

It is currently formatted NTFS with just the 1 partition from the factory. I have no problem if I have to re-format or partition or anything else, being as it is brand new and all data is safely backed up.

Any recommendations would be greatly appreciated.

Cheers!

2

You have the old WDTV Gen 1 (Released way back in 2008)
http://support.wdc.com/KnowledgeBase/answer.aspx?ID=3306

The WDTV Gen1 firmware only supports a maximum of 2TB (Terabytes) … no way around it (having said that, i guess you could try 2x2TB 1x1TB partitions… but can’t guarantee it will work)

(the old WDTV Lives and Live+ started introducing > 2TB support… NOTE: attempting to connect >2TB drives on unsupported firmware may and can result in data corruption)

If you need > 2TB support … then you will need to buy a Recent WDTV (after 2011)

I can personally confirm … 4TB Works on my WDTV Live Hub and WDTV (2014 Edition)

And i have seen people post 5TB - 6TB HDD working on these devices. (including the WDTV Live Streaming)

3

Thanks JoeySmyth for your prompt response to this. It certainly explains why I am experiencing difficulties.

Hopefully this will be used as reference for others encountering the same issue.

Cheers!