WDTV Live Freezes whilst scanning external 2TB WD

WD Legacy Products WD TV Live & Live Plus
1

My WDTV keeps freezing whilst it is scanning the external USB2 hard drive that I have connected to it.

I have the latest official firmware installed (1.02.21)  and the hard drive that I am using is a WD Elements 2TB External 3.5" HDD formatted in HFS+ (I’m a mac user).

When I startup the WDTV it displays the usual interface and the USB light starts flashing on the front of the player to show that it is scanning the HDD, but a few seconds later the scanning light goes out and the screen freezes so I have to unplug the WDTV at the wall in order to reboot it. 

Strangely enough, once I reboot the WDTV reads the external hard drive fine until I power it down with the on/off button and then turn it on again.

Basically it will only read my hard drive after a full power-down reboot so I’m having to reboot the player by removing the power before every time I use it, which is quite frustrating.

Anybody had a similar experience, or worked out a fix for this? I’m wondering if it’s a problem specific to the WD elements external hard drive as friends of mine who have the same setup but use the Freecom 2TB external HDD don’t seem to be experiencing the same issue.

Thanks in advance.

2

I think you’re heading down the right path;

HFS+, if I recall, requires that you turn Journaling off.   Have you done that?

KB Article

Also, has it ALWAYS behaved that way, or did it occur after adding additional content?   If the latter, have you tried REMOVING the content that was added?

3

Someone here reported an issue like this that was fixed by running a CHKDSK on the unit – don’t know if Mac has similar utilities, but it might not hurt to fully scrub that disk just to be sure.

4

I think that it was OK for a couple of weeks when I first got it but I add content every few days so it’s difficult to remember what I added and when.

I guess I can try reformatting it with the Journalling turned off.

Thanks for your help

5

yeah a chkdsk scan worked great for me, must of had some currupted date in there. Also as MKelley suggested to me delete the wdtv folder in the drives root and let it rebuild itself.

I was having similar issues. it’ll save you from reformatting anyway, hopefully.

It does take a while to complete the check disk over usb, but its worth it. And you won’t lose your files.

6

Unfortunately I don’t think that I can a chkdsk scan from my Mac on a HFS+ formatted hard drive.

7

I’ve reformatted the disk without Journalling on and have begun copying all my content back onto the drive. I have also downloaded an Automator script that turns hidden folders on and off so if I have any further problems I’ll try deleting the WDTV folder manually.

Thanks for all your contributions guys.

8

Before you get *everything* back on you should check it to make sure it’s working with the Live, if you haven’t already.  If nothing more, it will give you a baseline to know if adding some content (either an amount or certain files) is causing the problem.