Important Notice Regarding Single USB Drives Greater than 2 TB's and WD TV Products

WD Legacy Products WD TV Live & Live Plus
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The WD Community was created for Users, such as yourself, to help one another, and to share your experiences and ideas with one another. If you have a question and the answer was not good enough for you I’ll recommend you to contact tech support directly. 

To Contact WD for Technical Support
http://support.wdc.com/contact/index.asp?lang=en

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I would agree with @RoofingGuy that it is some limitation in the docking station.

I read back through @facky2000’s post and this statement now jumps out-

‘It has something to do with the USB interface board installed with the packaged WD external drives.  If you hook up a bare drive to the WDLive w/o the board (like thru a dock), it doesn’t read it.  But if you connect that interface board to the drive then connect to the WDLive, it reads it fine (needs to be GPT to read w/board).’

Simple conclusions-

  1. The WD SATA-USB interface board in their HD’s support 3Tb drives.

  2. The docking station SATA-USB interface does not fully support 3Tb drives.

The contention that just because it appears to work in Windows and that it should thus work on the WDTV Live is bogus. It may be that Windows is not doing any check to see if it can work with the drive through the docking station SATA-USB connection. Maybe the WDTV Live is just doing a more thorough check to see if it can work with the drive. Highly possible given how they got burnt with this situation in the first place.

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Facky20002000 wrote:
You’re saying that even though I can hook up the 3TB drive with the dock to my PC and read files, somehow it might not be working properly on the PC?  Are you serious?

 

Yes… that’s exactly what I’ve been saying over and over and over.  That’s what many people report…

They hook up their dock… it reads and writes for a while… and _ THEN _ files start getting corrupted because there isn’t true compatibility.

And as I’ve repeatedly said, that’s even what was happening with 3TB USB drives connected directly to the WDTVs under the older firmwares… users _ thought _ they were working fine for a few days or a few weeks or a few months, and _ then _ started losing all their files.  It was only once files started being lost that WD realized there was a deeper incompatibility issue and immediately blocked access to the drives.  Up until then, WD thought they were compatible.

So, yes… I’m serious.  Unless the chipset in the dock was _ designed _ to properly work with large drives, the fact that you are currently able to use it with the PC is rather irrelevant.  It is no guarantee that everything is compatible, and there’s a very good chance that it _ isn’t _ working totally right, and that may easily explain why it doesn’t show up at all on the WDTV.

That’s why I keep saying you need to talk to the dock manufacturer about it’s support for large drives.

You say you don’t need to ask them.  But until you do ask them, you’ll not be getting anywhere.

“It should work” has been shown to not be a sufficient answer, for most things.

If it helps, think of it in terms of small AC motors.  They’re designed for 120VAC.  If you hook it up to 80VAC (perhaps due to using too long/thin an extension cord) it will appear to work… for a while.  But the motor will soon burn out.  The motor “working” on the lower voltage was not a sign that everything was ok.

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Facky20002000 wrote:

I didn’t need to contact them, because the dock is SPECIFIED TO WORK WITH DRIVES 2TB AND UP.  Think about it, what do I gain with lying.  I’m here trying to resolve an issue I have.  How is lying going to get a resolution?  …and you say it’s besides the point, but you continue to hammer your “utterly worthless” point…

    • *And you still have not provided the manufacturer/make/model and manufactuers web link for this docking station so we can help you.
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…sitting with exactly the same problem. However, i failed to read the forums before getting the new drive. Im sitting with a VERY laborious back and forth transfer of movies and shows to watch on a smaller drive. What a pain!!!

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Does the first gen WD HDTV Player work with the 3tb externals with any particular firmware?

Or is there another trick to get this working on the non-live version.

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chiefo wrote:

Does the first gen WD HDTV Player work with the 3tb externals with any particular firmware?

 

Or is there another trick to get this working on the non-live version.

No…

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Gday

Im in Australia , I have the old WD Media Box which doies not work with 3TB drives.

Bought a Seagate GoFlext TV ti use with my 3TB drive. which is complete **bleep**e compared to myold WD Box. So has this definitly been resolved for the WD TV Live and Live Plus ?? Because Im going to buy one shortly. Cant stand the Seagate Goi Flex just awful and it wont divide up my Movies and Music , have to navigate via browsing or it indexes my 25 000 tracks INDIVIDUALLY !!! No folder browsing like the WD anf you cant turn indexing off. So annoying.

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Yes  ForgeNZ, the WD TV Live and Live Plus are compatible with 3 TB drives since two firmware updates ago.