External HDD not recognised by TV

[Derek Smith]

I've got a Samsung TV that recognised USB sticks, up to 128GB. I've got a 3TB external HDD. No problems with a desktop and laptop in accessing it in the main. However, I can't clone an operating disc to the HDD. I get a fault window regarding false 4096 sectors.

My TV refuses to recognise the external HDD. No fault windows, no clue given. Does anyone have a clue as to why?

[alock]

It's probably formatted as NTFS.

TV might only support FAT32, which itself is limited to 2TB partitions

[Derek Smith]

alock said:

It's probably formatted as NTFS.

TV might only support FAT32, which itself is limited to 2TB partitions

Thanks for that. I'll give it a go.

[Derek Smith]

Unfortunately, that's not the answer. But thanks anyway.

Any othr suggestions

[Road2Ruin]

Derek Smith said:

Unfortunately, that's not the answer. But thanks anyway.

Any othr suggestions

TVs are limited to the type of disks and formats they can handle. Have a look in the user manual for the TV. It might be it only likes disks up to a certain size. The disk is also likely to be needed to be formated by the TV, rather than a PC, before it can be used.

[Derek Smith]

Road2Ruin said:

TVs are limited to the type of disks and formats they can handle. Have a look in the user manual for the TV. It might be it only likes disks up to a certain size. The disk is also likely to be needed to be formated by the TV, rather than a PC, before it can be used.

Right.Got that. No problems with any USB drive though. That confuses me.

[944 Man]

I'm guessing that its capacity is the issue. Think of it as a BIOS limitation. My media player will only recognise a max. 2048GB drive.

[mmm-five]

I have the same problem with USB-powered HDDs and our Samsung smart TVs...and it seems to be down to the TV not providing enough power to the HDD through the USB port...and the TV also not liking powered hubs either.

However, the strange thing is any new HDD (usually a 4TB one) will work for a couple of months before stopping, and then nothing I can do will make it show up.

All my USB sticks and SSDs still work fine.

Now just have a cheap mini-PC to use as a media centre (an i3 Intel NUC with 8GB RAM and 128GB SSD) which powers the larger HDD perfectly.

[silentbrown]

Derek Smith said:

Road2Ruin said:

TVs are limited to the type of disks and formats they can handle. Have a look in the user manual for the TV. It might be it only likes disks up to a certain size. The disk is also likely to be needed to be formated by the TV, rather than a PC, before it can be used.

Right.Got that. No problems with any USB drive though. That confuses me.

All the gory details of the FAT filesystem here. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Design_of_the_FAT_fi...

Basically, a system designed when 160KB floppy disc was a pretty neat concept has been extended in stages over the years to try and cope with media that is up to 10,000,000 times larger...

[sgrimshaw]

Use something like Partition Magic, Partition Manager or Partition Wizard (all free) to take a good look at the drive setup. All will fix problems in the structure, reformat etc.

https://www.easeus.com/partition-manager/epm-free....

https://www.paragon-software.com/free/pm-express/

https://www.partitionwizard.com/

Get the drive working perfectly on PC before thinking about the TV's ability to access it (or not).

What's the model number of the TV?

Edited by sgrimshaw on Sunday 6th June 07:41

[sgrimshaw]

Apparently Samsung TVs have some usb issues...

Long read, but some of the tips might help:

https://eu.community.samsung.com/t5/tv/samsung-tv-...

[595Heaven]

On our Samsung TVs only one of the USB ports provides enough power for an external HDD. It is marked up as such, but might be worth checking that is the one you are using

[Derek Smith]

My external HDD has it's own power unit. It's 3TB USB2. I've stopped using it for important storage as it's about 4 years old and I've had two HDDs go bent on me. Not an experience I wish to repeat. So I store films and such on it.

sgrimshaw said:

Apparently Samsung TVs have some usb issues...

Long read, but some of the tips might help:

https://eu.community.samsung.com/t5/tv/samsung-tv-...

That was depressing, but thanks.

A friend has suggested connecting the drive through another device, such as a DVD player/recorder. The one I have, a Sony, has a scart socket, so probably predates USB. My BT box has no USB connector. I could run it through a laptop, but that's a lot of faffing about.

I've got a couple of 128GB flash drives and, at the moment, they seem to run well, plugged into the TV. Given the problems others have had, I might go with them for a while. If they go bent, and if I can find a DVD player with a USB socket, I'll go with that.

[Road2Ruin]

Derek Smith said:

That was depressing, but thanks.

A friend has suggested connecting the drive through another device, such as a DVD player/recorder. The one I have, a Sony, has a scart socket, so probably predates USB. My BT box has no USB connector. I could run it through a laptop, but that's a lot of faffing about.

I've got a couple of 128GB flash drives and, at the moment, they seem to run well, plugged into the TV. Given the problems others have had, I might go with them for a while. If they go bent, and if I can find a DVD player with a USB socket, I'll go with that.

Hi Derek,
I just use a USB flash drive too. I have one permanently plugged in for recording and one I can put films on if needed. I also have a NAS that streams to my Samsung, so rarely need to plug the extra USB stick in.

[Derek Smith]

Road2Ruin said:

Hi Derek,
I just use a USB flash drive too. I have one permanently plugged in for recording and one I can put films on if needed. I also have a NAS that streams to my Samsung, so rarely need to plug the extra USB stick in.

Thanks, RTR. It's irritating to concede defeat. I'll probably get a couple of larger flash drives and go that way.

I'm 'consolidating' my DVD collection, giving Handbrake a good run, as we want the area occupied by the DVD racks for something else. The 3TB HDD that I wasn't using for storage seemed optimum for that. Brilliant idea that, it seems, has a fatal flaw.

I've just checked prices on Amazon. I've bought Integral recently. Here's a comparison:

128gb = £24 = £0.1875 per gb
256gb = £60.60 = £0.237 per gb
512gb = £83.32 = £0.163 per gb.

Might go for 512.

[Road2Ruin]

Derek Smith said:

Thanks, RTR. It's irritating to concede defeat. I'll probably get a couple of larger flash drives and go that way.

I'm 'consolidating' my DVD collection, giving Handbrake a good run, as we want the area occupied by the DVD racks for something else. The 3TB HDD that I wasn't using for storage seemed optimum for that. Brilliant idea that, it seems, has a fatal flaw.

I've just checked prices on Amazon. I've bought Integral recently. Here's a comparison:

128gb = £24 = £0.1875 per gb
256gb = £60.60 = £0.237 per gb
512gb = £83.32 = £0.163 per gb.

Might go for 512.

Derek, can you plug your HDD into your router and use it as a network drive to the TV for playing films? Some routers allow this and have a usb socket on them.

[anonymoususer]

Road2Ruin said:

Derek, can you plug your HDD into your router and use it as a network drive to the TV for playing films? Some routers allow this and have a usb socket on them.

The poster above is nearest the mark. You could try the above or look for a media player that connects to your tv via HDMI and allows USB devices to be plugged into it
No amount of partitioning the drive into smaller drives will work
The TV will be the same as ours. Fine with a powered drive any size up to 2TB bigger and not recognised
Using a portable drive its more complicated as some will work fine some won't - probably a power issue hence why its better to use a powered drive
A USB stick works fine. We have a Western Digital Brick type Elements 1TB drive plugged into the TV that we can record from and we can still use USB 2 or 3 socket to plug a USB drive into if needs be to watch stuff

[xeny]

Derek Smith said:

Thanks, RTR. It's irritating to concede defeat. I'll probably get a couple of larger flash drives and go that way.
.

From the hosts perspective, there's no magical difference between a Flash drive, an SSD and a mechanical HD. Have you got a 2TB or less drive you can try? Once you go above 2 TB you pretty much need GPT rather than MBR disk partitioning, which may be part of the problem.

[944 Man]

I too think that plugging the external device into the router will be the easiest solution. Or, if you're feeling flush, buy a NAS device which your television or media player and access either directly or via UPnP.

The problem will be straight forward: the issue is working out what it s, rather than what it may be, from the information supplied. Unfortunately, as is usually the case, the information is not sufficiently complete and we are guessing (some better than others).

Based on virtually no information, my first guess would be a 2TB limit and the easiest way around this is to serve the data to the television through another device which is not similarly restricted.

Edited by 944 Man on Tuesday 8th June 01:36