WDTV Live - random avi files being converted to folders

WD Legacy Products WD TV Live & Live Plus
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Just thought I’d reply to this topic since I started it back in February.

Nothing has been done about this and at this stage I doubt anything will. I tried a previous posters suggestion of using a computer running a linux variant and it worked.

I tried the ubuntu live CD so I wouldn’t have to do an install.

I took note of what files were showing as folders instead of video files.

I plugged my HDD directly to the computer via USB.

When I browsed to the locations within ubuntu the files showed as regular video files so I just did a copy of them. I did it to the same location and just used another name.

When I plugged the drive back into my WD box the files were there and worked no problems. I had to remove the “bad” files while still in ubuntu as when doing it from my windows machine over the network they won’t remove. Also I tried accessing the drive through the network while in ubuntu and I just got the files as folders I had to use the direct USB connection. Kind of a pain but at least I know that there’s a way to recover the files when they suddenly go missing.

Can’t currently afford another media player so will stick with this but definately wont’ be recommending this setup to anyone. Will be looking for another brand of media player to replace this one as soon as I can afford it.

82

Has anyone had this problem with a non Western Digital drive?

I was not aware of this issue until recently when I began some NAS maintenance.  I plugged in a 500gb Passport drive and a 160gb Maxtor dirve to temporarily hold some files from my NAS.   The Passport began converting some mpg files to folders but I didn’t have the problem with the Maxtor drive.  I felt the Passport must have an issue and disconnected it but have left the Maxtor connected.  The Maxtor has been connected for about 2 weeks and no issues with it.

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I doubt it’s a brand issue cause my WD Passports never had any converted files. That’s probably the reason why WD can’t nail it down, it’s not just that reproducible.

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Nice to know some WD drives don’t have the problem but doesn’t answer the question if only WD drives have the problem.  I would still be interested to know if anyone has a drive that isn’t WD that has had the problem.

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Have you browsed all pages of this thread? Really noone reporting a non-WD drive?

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I have “browsed” the entire thread a couple of times and didn’t see mention of non WD drives.

Doing more research, I found an interesting thread on a Linksys forum regarding a couple of routers with attached drives having the same issue.

http://community.linksys.com/t5/Wireless-Routers/Media-files-changing-to-folder-types/td-p/504192

I’m  not a very technical person but seems their issues are the same and they blame it on their router firmware.  Also, I saw mentions of the problem occuring on 3 drive brands.

I have plugged my WD drive back into my WDTV LIve + and experimenting more.  I first noticed the problem when my WD drive was getting pretty full.  My Maxtor drive has never been near capacity.  So, I’m going to add files slowly to my WD drive over days till I see the problem again.  It it occurs again as it is getting full, I’ll try the same with the Maxtor drive.

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Hi Janry

Venkat here from Chennai, India. Yes I have the same problem with my Seagate hard drives. I have quite a few 1TB and 2TB drives, few WD and the rest Seagate. I also have a 1TB Seagate FreeAgent portable hard drive that I bought in 2011. I 1st started noticing the problem in this portable drive and thought it might be due to some virus or malware etc.

However this morning, when I was watching a 720p episode of Criminal Minds Season 3, from my Seagate 2TB USB 3.0 drive, I noticed that after I was done with episode 18 and got back to the folder, episode 17 was missing. All other episodes from 1 to 20 were there and I had watched episode 17 from the same drive just 2 days back.

Having a doubt, I removed the drive from the WD media player and connected it to my PC. And I was right. Episode 17, the 720p MKV file, had been converted into a folder which was of zero bytes size, had a padlock icon on it, and could not be accessed. If double clicked, it says the folder is not accessible. It does not let me delete the folder either.

So basically, I have lost episode 17. I have been going through the other WDTV forums on the net, and people do seem to have described this issue, but apparently no solution has been found yet. Some have said they have rolled back their firmware from the 1.06.43 to an older one but still no confirmation that this has indeed solved the problem.

I have the WD TV Live HD Media Player, Asian Version, PAL.

This is not the Live Plus which was sold in the USA though they look identical.

Difference between the 2 is only some online services which will anyway not work outside the USA.

I look forward to your thoughts on this issue as I use this player every day for watching 720p, 1080p DD and DTS TV shows and movies, and I cannot be losing files like this. It is getting frustrating.

Oh and by the way, it’s not just movie files that get converted to folder. I also have some PNGs and JPGs which have got converted to folders in the same way. Luckily I had a backup of all those photos elsewhere.

Regards,

Venkat

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Thanks Venkat,

Shoots my theory out of the water but I still have not had a problem with my Maxtor dirve.

About a week ago, I did a quick format on my Passport and reconnected it to the WDTV.  Over the week, I have been slowly adding files to it, watching programs from it, and moving files from folder to folder.  I have had no issues in this week.

But, I have not reached the capacity on the drive that I had when I first had the problem.  I’m getting close and now want to see if the problem will occur as the drive nears full capacity.

Stay tuned.  I’m continuing to experiment. 

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Ok Janry. I am sure your experimentation will be helpful too. The drive on which my Criminal Minds episode got converted to a folder, was a 2TB USB 3.0 desktop powered hard drive, and had about (and still has) 300 to 350GB of free space. So I won’t really call that nearing full. 350GB is still a lot of space.

My Seagate portable 1TB USB 2.0 hard drive right now has about 150GB of free space, but this folder conversion has been happening on this drive for quite some time. Even some of my music folders have MP3s converted to folders. If a folder or a subfolder or a sub-sub-folder has this kind of a locked converted folder, it doesn’t let you copy that folder or delete it. This is a big problem.

When I find a particular folder doesn’t get copied from drive 1 to drive 2, I have to get into that folder and check for such locked converted folders, and then copy the rest of the files and folders manually without selecting the locked folder. This is a big pain when I want to backup my drive. 

The only way to get rid of these locked converted folders is to format the drive. But we can’t keep doing this as it isn’t good for the drive.

Hmm. I am now considering getting the new WD TV Live Streaming Media Player (the latest sleek and slim model with built in WiFi). The latest firmware update for this model even supports DTS HD Master Audio passthrough and I am very impressed with this feature as I have a Denon 2113 AV receiver which I purchased in March this year, which supports all the latest HD audio and video formats, including 4k video. I am quite eager to get this latest player and test out movies with DTS HD MA encoded.

Anyway please do keep me, and the others here posted on the findings from your experimentation!

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VSG12777 wrote:

The only way to get rid of these locked converted folders is to format the drive. But we can’t keep doing this as it isn’t good for the drive.

And why is that? Also, did the Ubuntu Live-CD method of copying back files and deleting them rather then formatting not work for you?

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i have tried this using the ubuntu 13.10 distro and a 64-bit win7 OS, but step 7 simply does not work for me - the files are still showing up as empty folders.

can it depend on the distro? (lubuntu 13.04 vs ubuntu 13.10)

thx rgds

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update on the ubuntu-trick: it works, i made a mistake.

i moved a couple of folders thru the network to another external hard disk, and i tried to copy the folders to the HDD from this second external drive. you can only repair the files on the original drive, so don’t move them around!

i observed 2 interesting things about the files-are-converted-to-folders phenomenon:

  1. only .vob and .jpg files are affected. i have much much more .avi and .mkv files but they seem to be intact.

  2. converted files are concentrated in one particular folder that is by far the most frequently used (contains children’s movies…;-), located directly in the root directory. DVDs under other folders (VIDEO_TS folders) are not infected at all.

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  1. mkv files are converted too
  2. all directories are affected

Cocovanna

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I have a WDTV Live Plus with a 3TB WD “My Book” drive and a 2TB Seagate “Expansion Drive” drive attached. Both drives are badly affected.

As well as the previously mentioned problems with *vob, *.jpg, and *.mkv files, I’ve also got *.png, *.ifo, and *.bup files converted to directories.

The problems appear to get worse as the drives fill. I maxed out both drives a week ago, and even though I deleted some files, the number of files converted to directories have increased dramatically since that event.

I also have a WDTV Live unit with a 2TB Seagate drive attached. This particular drive has never been more than 70% filled. At the moment there’s about 800GB of video files and 300GB of audio files on that drive. None of the video files have been converted, but amongst the audio files, many *.m3u and *.cue files have been converted.

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also tried Linuxing it, but I cant invest days to find every corrupted file in windows then reboot Ubuntu and make a copy of them. do you have any good way to find these files in one search? I couldnt finetune TC enough to make it work.

btw posted a support case. ill get back to here when getting any response.

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I guess it has been about 3 weeks since I reformatted my drive and began experimenting to reproduce the problem.  No luck.  I’ve had no files converted to folders on either drive during this time.  I guess I’ll put the Passport back in daily useage and keep a close eye on it.  I’ll definately keep a backup of my files for the time being.

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I use a utility which confirms all files md5 checkum against a file. This finds corrupted files easily.

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I I’m programmer and I made a litle software to recovery every file that the WD convert to folder, jpg,avi,mkv etc contact me if you want to recovery your file.

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Hi there BigSimon

Sent you a private message regarding the program you have mentioned. 

Thanks.

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Take care before using unknown programs