WDTV live with Thermaltake BlacX DUAL Drive problem

[that_wasnt_nice]

Hi!

I’ve have been using my WDTV Live with a 1TB WD green drive in a Thermaltake Single drive toaster for some time now and it has been working great but i have run out of space!

Soo, I decided to try the Thermaltake DUAL drive toaster and just add another 2TB drive into it along with my 1TB.

However, when I tried this, the WDTV live is only showing the contents of ONE DRIVE (in slot 1) but NOT the second drive (in slot 2). If I swap the drives and put Drive 1 in Slot 2 and vice versa and then try again… It will show the contents of DRIVE 2 (now in slot one) but drive 1 is missing!

How I can get both the drives to be seen at once???

[mkelley]

I don’t think you’re going to be able to do this… AFAIK you would have to be able to set them up as a single volume, which it doesn’t appear that box can do (like an NAS can).

[sunnynguyen]

Hi everyone, I’m new here !

It’s sad to be said that WD live doesn’t support USB hub so it will not work with all dual HDD docks perfectly, I hope they will fix this in the next firmware (if the hardware is possible).

[willyarnold]

I emailed Western Digital about this problem as I really need this support as well. This is what I said:

“Hi and thanks for a great product. I do have one concern. I cannot get my WDTV Live media player to recognize both drives in my BlacX Duet docking station which I bought specifically to use with the media player. It will only randomly see one drive or the other, but not both. And I know I am not the only person using the Duet with your product, it is becoming increasingly popular. However the only solution I can find online is to use a hacked firmware which has drivers that support this device. I do not want to use a hacked firmware. I hope that you can work with Thermaltake to resolve this issue.”

And this was their response. 

“I apologize for your inconvenience. At the moment, WD only provides support when the drive’s are physically plugged into your unit without the aid of any devices.”

B-Rad’s WDLXTV enhanced firmware has drivers that make it work. I don’t see why WD can’t add this. It seems as though it would be pretty simple. However, they did also tell me in the email that they review these forums too see what features are requested the most, so does anyone else out there want to see BlacX Duet (really USB hub) support?

[PixelPower]

willyarnold wrote:

However, they did also tell me in the email that they review these forums too see what features are requested the most, so does anyone else out there want to see BlacX Duet (really USB hub) support?

Absolutely.  The unit has 2 USB ports.  If you use a wi-fi adapter you’re down to 1 USB port.  

I’m planning on using a wireless keyboard, so that takes me down to 0 USB ports if I want to have it plugged in for use all the time.

USB hub support is a fairly trivial addition (b-rad et al had no trouble adding this to the WDLXTV homebrew), so its omission from official firmware is not due to technical reasons.  Hopefully we’ll get it in a future update. 

The thread where you can vote for USB Hubs properly is located here:

http://community.wdc.com/t5/WD-TV-Live-Ideas/USB-Hubs/idi-p/2538

Current Status:  Acknowledged  

“This is on the to-do list.  Thanks for your patience.”

They seem to be happy to add the feature, just a question of where it sits on their mysterious list of priorities (that are seldom in line with what users actually want).  ;)

[NavyChief]

I experienced something similar with a Rosewill R2S-B dual-bay enclosure.  In JBOD mode, with one drive the Live Plus recognizes it fine but with two drives (in my case a 1.5TB and a 1TB drive) only one is recognized and accessed.

On a whim, I set the unit up for BIG/SPAN mode with both drives installed.  No joy, but I didn’t realize the drive had to be reinitialized and partitioned from scratch in this mode.  Connected the unit to my Win7 computer and used Computer Manager to set it up and format it as one big partition. 

After copying a bit over 2TB of movies to it and connecting it to the Live Plus again, success!  All of the files are accessible and can be played from the local drive.  So, it appears that if a dual-bay USB enclosure supports BIG/SPAN mode you should be able to make it work with two drives installed.

The only frustration I have is that when browsing from the local drive the cover art only shows up when navigating by folders, and only for the folders themselves (not for the movie files, even when a .jpg in the folder has the same name).  And  Selecting the All Video option just shows a bunch of generic icons, period.  This happens even after power-cycling the unit and manually browsing to all folders.

Even so… I’m happy to find out that my dual-bay drive enclosure isn’t completely useless.

[heavenlydmeonic]

NavyChief wrote:

I experienced something similar with a Rosewill R2S-B dual-bay enclosure.  In JBOD mode, with one drive the Live Plus recognizes it fine but with two drives (in my case a 1.5TB and a 1TB drive) only one is recognized and accessed.

 

On a whim, I set the unit up for BIG/SPAN mode with both drives installed.  No joy, but I didn’t realize the drive had to be reinitialized and partitioned from scratch in this mode.  Connected the unit to my Win7 computer and used Computer Manager to set it up and format it as one big partition. 

 

After copying a bit over 2TB of movies to it and connecting it to the Live Plus again, success!  All of the files are accessible and can be played from the local drive.  So, it appears that if a dual-bay USB enclosure supports BIG/SPAN mode you should be able to make it work with two drives installed.

 

The only frustration I have is that when browsing from the local drive the cover art only shows up when navigating by folders, and only for the folders themselves (not for the movie files, even when a .jpg in the folder has the same name).  And  Selecting the All Video option just shows a bunch of generic icons, period.  This happens even after power-cycling the unit and manually browsing to all folders.

 

Even so… I’m happy to find out that my dual-bay drive enclosure isn’t completely useless.

 

 

You beat me too it =P I have the exact same Rosewill and had to concantenate the 2X 2TB drives before the Plus would see it. I also had the Folder Icon issue, but I resolved it by deleteing the .wdtv folder off the root of the drive, making sure the .jpgs were 333x400 in size, and letting the Live rebuild the database, which took a LONG time since I had over 3TB of movies on there, most of them 700meg MKVs … so there were a bunch.

[kosh2]

If you are wanting this type of device you are better off adding on a few more dolars and investing in a proper NAS. This device does not seem to have uPNP or raid etc. Your WDTV LIve wont appreciate that.

[heavenlydmeonic]

kosh2 wrote:

If you are wanting this type of device you are better off adding on a few more dolars and investing in a proper NAS. This device does not seem to have uPNP or raid etc. Your WDTV LIve wont appreciate that.

But I didn’t need (or honestly want) a baby NAS box … just a honking big box of space I could haul around whenever I wanted to that doesn’t need to be net-attached to use. I think a lot of people that talk about NAS this and NAS that don’t understand a whole lot of what they are doing, wanting, or talking about =/  I wonder how many people here know that your can get a nice router and attach a USB storage to it, and convert it to a Ghetto-NAS? And then just pull it off whenever you want to take it to your buddys house.

 For network storage I have a Dell PE 2950 that I have in a closet with a big, fat JBOD hanging off of it. When people ask me how much porn I actually have, I can just say “All of it.”