FWIW, I use both the front and back ports interchangeably with a 2.0 powered hub and a combination of 2.0 and 3.0 Toshiba and WD non-powered drives. I have never had a problem with a drive hanging or not being recognized on either port. I bought one of the first units available from BestBuy.
Switchblade wrote:
I now have the Popcorn Hour A-300, which totally smokes the WD right out of the gate.
So, a player that costs twice as much and was built around a more capable processor, is “better” for you? Who’da thunk it?
I suppose if you traded in your Yugo and bought a Mercedes instead, there’d be a noticable difference there too?
I considered getting a Popcorn Hour, but I don’t believe it can play 3TB + HD’s.
Pretty much the only devices that can are made by Western Digital - correct me if I’m wrong.
Duh, twice the price and you get a much better device. Don’t forget we are only talking about $219. for the pch. If you don’t mind the very limited gui, the slow speed, and the lack of features, then only spend the $100. If you want to be much happier, then add another $100 and you are there. Your Yugo to Mercedes is lame. The pch is not the Mercedes. If you want that you can spend $600. and get a Mac Mini and run Plex, that is the top dog in this world, full stop.
All of that said, if you have your **bleep** WD working for you, great, go be happy. I wasn’t able to get there so I moved on.
Fennec - As for the PCH working with 3tb drives, yes of course it does. In fact the 4tb are already on the approved and tested compatibility list. There is nothing the WD can do that the pch cannot do. It’st the other way around. The pch can do much more.
Switchblade - This was posted by an administrator on the PCH website regarding the A-300
“External 3TB drives are currently not supported over USB because the kernel used is to old as it seems, we try to find a solution, currently on SATA so only internal support larger drives.”
Hi guys,
after doing now several weeks of research i was pointed to this thread.
I do have the third WD TV Live Wifi already and (sad to say) all three do have that “rear usb port problem”.
After about 30 - 90 minutes the player just simply freezes. Only a complete reboot makes it usable again.
I don’t know waht’s causing the problem but it seems as if there is a “series” of WD TVs that have some problems with the rear usb port.
Connecting the HDD to the front usb port gives absolutely no problem the WD TV runs for several hours without problems.
I didn’t write down the erial number of my first one but the second and third are only ~100 numbers away from each other.
Perhaps we can find out some kind of “serial range” that is affected by this problem?
Regards Basti
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I also use usb-powered usb3.0 hd’s and use an usb2.0 extendercable from the back usb-port and have no problems at all. Maybe it’s worth a try for you.
Hi Zwaarpoot,
that was one of my ideas too 
I already use an usb 2 cable for my external powered usb 3 HDD but i doesn’t help.
Just a moment ago there was a freeze again after 20:32 minutes of playback 
Regards Basti
Last couple of weeks I have been watching 2 -3 films a night and worked perfectly.
Not for me, sadly
I wouldn’t even mind if one of the usb ports doesn’t work correctly but (of course) it should not be the one that is used for “almost permanently attached drives”.
It simply doen’t look good if there always hast to be an usb cable hanging around in front of the device
It would be nice to know if this problem has already been recognized by WD and if it’s possible to find a solution.
As by know i think nobody really knows if this is an permanent error (by hardware) or something that can be fixed by a firmware update.
Regards Basti
Did you read that entire thread? That comment was made by pch DBA, not tech support. The very next post says his 3tb via usb is working just fine. Some poeple have issues with WD 3tb drives on the pch. I wonder if they do this **bleep** on purpose, make WD players have issues with Seagate drives, and pch not liking WD drives.
Anyway, you will find many more posts and more recent than that one, with people saying that they are using hubs and several drives via usb, all working fine and some have 4tb drives. Rather than believe that one post by a DBA, I’ll go by the many posts of people who have it working.
Oh, and here you can see the approved and tested hardware list,
http://www.networkedmediatank.com/wiki/index.php/A-300_Compatibility_Lists
Go down to the "USB attached HDD’s ", and you’ll see the 3 and 4tb drives already on the list. Also, there was a firmware update after the above post you mentioned, so perhaps it helped.
Sorry Switchblade but i absolutely don’t understand what you want to tell me with your posting
I have the exact same problem with the WD SMP. HDD WD 750GB USB 3.0 (WDBPCK7500ABK-EESN). Connecting the drive to the rear USB port picture freezes and after a while WD TV Live tells me something like that the USB drive is disconnected.
I think, this happens with exactly models SMP revision 01 (P/N: WDBGXT0000NBK-01 & P/N:WDBHG70000NBK-01) I do suspect that may be a difference between models ending with “01” and “00”(revision “01” and “00”).The issue is described here.:
http://community.wdc.com/t5/WD-TV-Live-Streaming-Issue/Loses-connection-to-USB-HDD/idi-p/338279
This issue described in details here
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