WDTV Live Hub Doesn't See 3 TB Drive, Does anyone else use a 3 TB drive with their Hub? Options

[hurricane51]

According the the release notes, FW 2.06.10 enabled support for hard drives larger than 2 TB. I installed a WD30EZRX (3 TB), NTFS drive and the Live Hub doesn't even detect a device on the USB port. No flashing of the activity light. Nothing.

Has anyone actually tried a 3TB drive yet?

[WDUser]

WD Support is pretty useless as we've already seen more times than we care to remember. 'Course that makes them no different from most of the lower-level support personnel out there...

Anyway, thanks for sharing. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif) It is thanks to people like you doing the hard work that others can get to know the best tips and tricks to be followed. Exactly why this site was set up, for people to share ideas and hopefully help each other solve problems that even WD is ignorant about.

[hurricane51]

Well, another problem has raised its head, and I'm not sure where where the cause lies. Or even if it's related specifically to the 3TB drives or the enclosure.

I've been using the LiveHub in this configuration for a few days now with zero problems. Today, I turned the LiveHub and the drive on and it won't see the drive. This is the same configuration I was using about 12 hours before yet it's now defunct.

I take the drive in its case over to my PC where it works fine. So I start checking everything I can think of (cables, ports, resetting the Live Hub, etc.) with no effect. I replace the drive in the enclosure with an exact duplicate in every way (including data) and voila! It sees THIS drive and starts compiling the media library. When it's finished, I find all of my video files but none of my music files. Hmm. I attach this drive to Windows and something happens that isn't new to me but I consider it again for the umpteenth time.

For as long as I've used the WD media players (starting at Gen 1), I occasionally get a message from Windows after attaching it to a USB port, asking if I want to Scan and Fix the drive. At first I always did, but it never found any errors. I figured it was seeing something that was caused by connecting the drive to another operating system, and started ignoring them. I occasionally would scan it but it never reported any errors.

Windows again displayed the message and I asked it to scan and fix. It reported that it HAD found errors. When I looked at details, most of the report only told what it was checking as it performed the procedure, but at the end it reported this:

Correcting errors in the master file table's (MFT) BITMAP attribute.
Correcting errors in the Volume Bitmap.
Windows has made corrections to the file system.

I disconnected the drive, reconnected it to the media player. It started compiling the media library and it found all of my files. I put it through all the tests I could for about an hour, then shut everything down. I connected the original disk to the PC and it also reported it had found errors, with the same message as before. When I connected it up to the media player it, too, worked as it had yesterday.

So now I'm trying to figure out what exactly causes these errors that Windows reports and what to do about them. I've always shut the media player off (not power off) then turned off the power to the drives. If I left the media player running, I always ejected the drive first. I'm wondering if I should ALWAYS eject the drive(s) before shutting them down, regardless of whether the media player is off or on. (What a pain!)

SO...if anyone has the patience to read through this, I'd be interested as to whether they've also experienced this Windows error, what their response is, and what their procedure is when shutting down the media player/drives.

[WDUser]

I'm wondering if I should ALWAYS eject the drive(s) before shutting them down, regardless of whether the media player is off or on. (What a pain!)

SO...if anyone has the patience to read through this, I'd be interested as to whether they've also experienced this Windows error, what their response is, and what their procedure is when shutting down the media player/drives.

Don't own the Hub, but somehow despite it being an obvious PITA, this is the procedure I've always followed. Is that why I've never had similar problems? No idea.

[hurricane51]

Don't own the Hub, but somehow despite it being an obvious PITA, this is the procedure I've always followed. Is that why I've never had similar problems? No idea.

I've tried that procedure, but no matter what I do, periodically it will lose a directory and dump the contents into the "found.0000" recorvery folder, sometimes multiple directories. It doesn't actually delete or corrupt the files, just deletes the parent folder.

Since it now supports powered USB hubs, I think I'll just go back to 2 TB drives (when I can afford them again) and use the 3TB for my PC's backup.