Is there a way to avoid waiting 10-15 minutes for scanning every time I turn on WDTV?

WD Legacy Products WD TV Live & Live Plus
1

Pretty much what the title says…  I’m using WD TV Live+ HD, with a 1TB My Book external HDD.  It works fine, but I’m really annoyed by the fact that every time I want to watch something, I have to wait 10-15 minutes while the WD TV scans my HDD.  Is there a way to bypass this process, or at least speed it up dramatically?  I have Media Library Compilation on by default, and I have been ejecting the HDD before shutting off WD TV.  I’m using an ethernet cable to connect the device directly to my router.  I have the latest firmware installed.

Would it scan more quickly if I disabled Media Library Compilation?  Are there any other things I could do to speed up the scan time or avoid it completely?

Also, what if I just kept WD TV running 24/7?  Would that cause problems such as overheating or dmaging the power supply, to either the WD TV or the My Book HDD?

2

Well, yeah, if you disable it, it won’t scan at all!  

But by the way, you don’t have to wait for it to finish before you start watching something…

3

Thanks for the quick reply.  I’ll try disabling that setting; I don’t really need it anyway as my media is already organized in folders.  But you say I don’t need to wait for it to finish scanning before I start watching movies?  Well for me, the “local drives” tab doesn’t seem to appear until the scan has finished (usually takes around 12-14 minutes).  So I’m unable to access the drive’s contents until after the scan finishes.

At any rate, I’ll try disabling Media Library and I’ll let you know how that works.  Thanks again!

EDIT: I disabled Media Library, ejected the drive, and restarted the WD TV.  It’s still scanning my HDD, and the “local drives” tab is still unavailable to me.  It’s been scanning for a few minutes already so my assumption is that this didn’t change anything.  Any other ideas?

4

hi

  • pls check on screen if you have really disabled that functinality [media library]

  • pls delete from the external drives the file named  “wdsomething” [do not remember exactly the name , that is the file added automatically in addition to your main folder - but be careful once deleting !] 

  • pls reboot [unplug from the electricity] and plug again

  • chekc if it worked 

regards

pawson

5

i’m also interested if you dudes leave there wdtvlive switched on while not in use ?? please

6

hi

in my case :

  • 50%/50% [constantly on  or  off during a week-days] 

  • b.band nat net => router =>a] wired to pc    &   b]  wired to wd hd live => hdmi to tv set    ,   wd hd live => usb 3tb and wired rj45 2tb nas.

  • all works fine

  • win7 all updated

  • wd hd live all latest [sadly] updates

  • media library : disabled

  • video : auto

  • audio : stereo

  • usb disks mapped and available/see on local net

  • media : played from usb 3tb or nas 2tb [xvid’s only sometimes from linked pc] 

  • unplugged wd hd live [for reboot] once for two quarters or three

  • changed places for rj45 cables : once for two or 3 quarters

  • all material : are played fine and well

regards

pawson

7

Thanks pawson.  The Media Library setting is definitely off.  And I assume you’re talking about the “WD Mac Tools” folder, which contains a couple of .dmg files?  I’ve looked into it a bit and it sounds like it’s safe to delete.  Can you elaborate on why I should “be careful” about deleting this directory?

I called the WD support line and got transferred to level 2 support, and the guy wasn’t very helpful.  He told me that I needed to put my movies in my HDD’s main directory (/Volumes/My Book/<filename.ext>) as opposed to (Volumes/My Book/Movies//<filename.ext>) and that doing this would solve the problem, so I renamed them all to maintain organization, and then moved them all to the main directory as he said to do.  (Thankfully I was able to mass move them using the Terminal so it didn’t take long.)  But then when I connected the drive to my WD TV unit, it still took 15 minutes to scan the drive.  So I’m thinking the guy didn’t know what he was talking about…

I’m going to call them back again tomorrow, but if they’re not any more helpful, I’ll try your suggestion pawson and I’ll let you know how it goes.  Thanks again for the help.  Any other suggestions would be appreciated.

Also, in case this is in any way helpful, the contents of my My Book drive are as follows:

  • Volumes/My Book/Music - [folder, which contains my iTunes library]

  • Volumes/My Book/WD Mac Tools - [folder, which came with the drive]

  • Volumes/My Book/Documentation - [folder, I think it contains manuals in a bunch of different languages]

  • Volumes/My Book/backups.backup-db - [folder, which contains my Time Machine back-ups]

  • A bunch of movie files in the main directory

As the above contents suggest, I don’t use the built-in software to back up my files, but instead use Time Machine.  Could this perhaps be part of the problem?  I’ll be sure to ask the WD tech support when I call them, but if anyone here happens to know the answer that could save me some time.

Alright sorry for the information overload.  If anyone has any advice for me though, it would be greatly appreciated.  If not, I guess I’ll just deal with the scan time, as it’s my only gripe with an otherwise great product.

8

hi

  • interesting…

  • in my case are :

* totally is deleted  “back up”  soft  [do not use it at all] , all works fine , no influence at all for player.

* I keep my films in  “my” defined   directories , for example : MOVIES > COMEDY > KIDS > . SHREK.MKV

* above naming  as well on NAS and hdd via usb -  works pefect

* media library is off

* scanning - upon each power on - takes  4  seconds  [at that time : #1 usb1 3 tb ,   #2 usb 2 1 tb,  #3 2 tb nas] 

* next 2 seconds [refresh network area in my win7]  and  I  see all of it [above]  on my pc [mapped naturally] 

* all updates are on [wd sadly - not enough time to roll back , can live with it as it is - I mean subtitles for example - all other things works quite fine] 

* audio - set to stereo

* video - set to auto

* hdmi only

* ehthernet only

well - something is wrong in case of you net/local network

  • try to format hdd [ntfs]

  • check if media library is truly OFF

  • try to reset [unplug and plug again] wd player

regards

pawson

===========

edit : the file to delete form hdd [attached by usb or nas] is named  “westerndigital.something” - nevetheless it woud be cleaned upong formatting as suggested.

this file is created each time automatically [if library is on] 

within the above file is stored data from your last activity [the place you stopped a movie or medias] - feel free to delete it. and check

9

As I said, I’ve already verified that Media Library is off.  My settings look virtually identical to yours.  I don’t have a folder called “westerndigital.*”; the entire contents of my HDD are listed in my previous post.

10

Just a guess, but it sounds more like the WDTV is doing a file system check because the drive was not unmounted cleanly at some point.

Try plugging the drive into a Win computer and running chkdisk on the drive.

11

It’s formatted for Macs so I’d probably have to reformat it in order to do that.  The guy I talked to at WD TV tech support told me the issue had to do with Time Machine, which apparently formats drives for its own needs, and that is what causes WD TV to rescan the drive every time.  So either way it sounds like I’d need to reformat the My Book drive to fix this.  I think instead, I’ll keep using the My Book for Time Machine and for storing my iTunes music, and then get a new HDD for movies/WD TV.

I’ve been thinking about getting a new HDD anyway, and WD Elements 2TB is currently on sale at over 40% off at Amazon, so I think I’m gonna go ahead and get that.  If it solves the problem – which, according to the guy at WD support, it will – then that is awesome.  If not, I’m no worse off, and I’ll have a 1.5TB drive exclusively for video content, which is great as my My Book is close to maximum capacity.

I’ll post an update once the Elements drive arrives, and once I’ve formatted it properly and transferred my movies over.

But one final question…  Pawson, you say that you keep your movies in subdirectories <Volumes/Drive/Movies/Genre/Title/file.ext> and it doesn’t need to rescan every time?  Is this true for everyone else here?  'Cause I’d much rather put my files back into folders as I had them before <Volumes/Drive/Movies/Title/file.ext>, than leave them laying in my drive’s main directory <Volumes/Drive/file.ext>.

12

Figwit wrote:
But one final question…  Pawson, you say that you keep your movies in subdirectories <Volumes/Drive/Movies/Genre/Title/file.ext> and it doesn’t need to rescan every time?  Is this true for everyone else here?  'Cause I’d much rather put my files back into folders as I had them before <Volumes/Drive/Movies/Title/file.ext>, than leave them laying in my drive’s main directory <Volumes/Drive/file.ext>.

I’ve always had the media Library off… Everything I have is stored as Movies:\Genre\mediafile.ext or Movies:\Genre\Subgenre\mediafile.ext or TV:\Show\Season\mediafile.ext.

Now, granted I basically leave my WDTV Live on 24/7 for other reasons, so I don’t have all that many startups to worry about, but yes my attached drives still get “scanned” at power-up… it’s just not a full scan, as far as I can tell.

When the menu appears when the WDTV boots, after the “Loading…” screen, if I immediately go to “Videos → Local Storage”, only USB2 shows up.  It usually takes about 10-20 seconds for USB1 to appear.  USB2 was getting “scanned” during the “Loading…” screen, going by the flashing USB light and the drive activity.

So, I honestly don’t know whether that answers your question or not. :wink:   On the one hand, my drives still get “scanned” before they appear, but on the other hand, it doesn’t take 10-15 minutes.  Certainly 10 or 20 seconds has been an acceptable wait to me, even if I wasn’t leaving it on all the time.

What I can do, however, is go turn the Library on and reboot, and see how long the drives take to appear then… if it’s the same few seconds, then I obviously get a full scan every time… if the drives take longer to appear, then the scanning I’m seeing is something quicker.

I’ll go try and get back to you. :smiley:

EDIT:  well, this may take a bit longer for me to test… the WDTV yelled at me that there isn’t enough room to compile the library… I’ll move some files around and then try again.

13

Well, my guess was right… what I’m seeing with the library “Off” isn’t the full scan.

With it turned on (and room on the drives), when the WDTV boots, then both drives immediately show up under “Folders”, but by the USB light and the drive lights and the on-screen message, the library is being compiled.  After about 45 seconds, USB2 was done scanning, and USB1 took about another minute to finish its scan.