I’ve had a WD HD TV and it’s been a really good buy as it will play almost any video file and I seldom experiences sync issues etc. I’ve gladly recommended the product to others. I got tired of having to keep changing USB memory sticks and salvaged some Hitachi ide drives (80 and 60Gb) from junked laptops at work. I have installed these drive in external USB cases and they work fine with all the other PCs I have tried them with. They are formatted NTFS and they WB TV will only report that there are two files on the drives Model.dat and xcopy32.mod. The WD TV function perfectly with and USB sticks and my external backup drive which coincidentally is a WD 300G SATA drive in a generic USB box which I’d rather not use as it requires a wall wart. The 2.5 drive I have tried both powered by the USB and external source. The only thing I can see is that WD have not built in support for 3rd party drives which is pretty poor and a huge shortcoming for an almost great product. I’m an IT professional with 25 years experience, I’ve checked the cable.
Is the external case one of the ones that the WDTV is known to support?
Unfortunately for me it’s not onr of the five apparently supported drives. I’ve not found a
PC yet that had to dowload drivers for tthese cases. The cases are by Ritmo USB2. They are common as anything.
Well, just because it isn’t on the list, doesn’t automatically mean it won’t work… but the ones on the list are proven to work perfectly.
But, just beacuse Windows can support a Plug-and-Play device doesn’t guarantee it would Plug-and-Play on a non-Windows device.
I’m guessing that it would need some kind of driver on the WDTV side to get it to work. In other words, you appear out of luck. 
I’ve obviously had no issues with WD cases, but I’ve never tried my older USB drives. One I’d bought as a USB HD, and the other was originally a USB CD Burner. I took the IDE burner out of it and slapped an IDE drive in it, and it’s worked for 4 or 5 years as a USB external hard drive, but I’ve never tested it with the WDTV. The simple fact is that the two non-WD USB drives are data backups, and the 2 WD MyBook Essentials were purchased solely for putting WDTV media on. It would be a lot of moving files around to empty the other externals and throw some media on and see what happens. I have a feeling I’d encounter the same thing that you are – the WDTV would need a driver to access them properly.
Unfortunately, the “WD’s My Passport portable hard drive or other USB storage device” on the box, implies it should work with any USB hard drive, even old USB1 ones.
I think you have a right to be upset that your external cases seem incompatible.
You might want to have a look at some of the non-official, third-party firmwares, like B-Rad’s WDLXTV. I believe some of them have support for things like adding USB DVD players, so their firmware might actually also get the WDTV to support your cases.
I just thought of something…
When I installed B-Rad’s firmware, the VCD on my MyBook Essentials shows up as a second drive, “cd-rom”, under that USB device (until the WDTV has finished scanning and can’t find any playable media on it, then it doesn’t show up any more).
So there’s a decent shot that it will help your drives get recognized by the WDTV. It can’t hurt to try. You can always rollback to your WD firmware if it doesn’t help and you don’t like it.
Hi, I was wondering about B-rads firmware update and if it would work. I guess I’ll try it and see.
Hi Friends…
I have the WD WD00AVN00BN for more than one year without problems, i has connected WD Passport HDD, WD Essential, Pendrives, and Samsung Story External 1.5TB and working OK, the problem is when you connect External HDD with high Amperes consumption, because the WD TV only get limited Amperes to device without External Supply, there is External HDD it need more Amperes to working OK, for to solver, you need External HDD with Power Supply, i has detected this problem in LCD TV’s with USB Port,
My Ext HDD having 2 or 3 partitions and are recognized por my WD TV Convert.
That is a very helpful suggestion for others that are having external drive issues, thank you.
But the original poster said he tried the drive both with USB power and with external power – it’s seems the WDTV just doesn’t like his external case.
