What to do with a new USB drive before you attach it to the WD TV, Important! Do this *before* you load the drive with media Options

[WDUser]

I've read many posts recently about how certain USB drives don't mount/show up when connected to the WD TV (could be any model). This issue seems to plague WD's own drives (the Elements series especially) most often, which is really quite ironic to say the least. Anyway, here are some best practices to be followed before you load your drive chock full of data, only to find out that it's not recognised, and that you can't repartition/reformat it now since you can't move the data anywhere (not to mention the hours it'll probably take to move TBs of data).

Note that no WD TV model supports USB drives larger than 2 TBs (yet), so if you have a drive >2 TB in size, use it for something else.

Here's the WD KB article for this issue: http://wdc.custhelp.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/5482

A new blank drive (if it's not pre-formatted, although most are nowadays) will probably need to be initialised first, so follow the instructions here: http://wdc.custhelp.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/1018. Remember to use the MBR (Master Boot Record) option for partition style and not GPT (GUID Partition Table) for best results. (GPT can be used for drives >2 TB in size, but those aren't meant to be used with these players anyway, unless a future FW update fixes this issue.)

Next follow the instructions here to delete all existing partitions on your drive, then repartition the drive and format it using a supported file system, such as NTFS or HFS+: http://wdc.custhelp.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/3865. Remember to delete all existing partitions first instead of simply reformatting an existing partition. This is important! Also, use all default settings while formatting and don't mess with the allocation unit size etc.

Finally you can load some media onto the drive and check if the drive shows up on being connected to the player, and that the media plays back properly. If so, proceed to load your entire collection onto the drive and enjoy! (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

P.S. I do this with every pre-formatted drive I buy (whether internal or external) before I start using it, since it gets rid of any weird/non-standard partitioning scheme the manufacturer might have used.