Maximum PC

i dont know if anyone else is having similar issues, but i recently bought a 1TB Seagate GOFlex external drive to move more movies downstairs to watch. before i was using the WD 500GB MyBook, which ran really well with this device. i guess that the GOFlex drive isnt compatible, but is sucks because the 1TB my books are expensive, and require the use of the power adapter, which is a downer, so i went with the GOFlex, which doesnt have a separate power cord.

the main issue i am having is that most of the time it sees the content on the GOFlex, but doesnt play. sometimes it says at the top "Scanning media..." but doesnt do much else besides allowing me to browse the files on it.

does the WDTV Live box have a drive limit of some sort? or is it just the incompatibility with the drive+box? i might try reformatting the GOflex drive, because maybe the software on it is hampering progress - just a guess though, since it is a different brand's software.

it must have been the Blu-Ray rips of Toy Stories 1-3 (2.5+GB MKV each video) that were making it really slow to load/read all of the other movies on the drive, because i moved them off the GoFlex, and the read speed increased, with less downtime for the previews, as well.

IIRC one of the WDTV's USB ports supplies more power than the other, you may want to re-arrange the two (there are two right?) usb ports on the goflex.

i am currently using the one on the back, between the HDMI port and the units power cable. i think its designated USB 1. the go flex drive does not have 2 USB, and is powered by the USB itself (normally some have like 2 USB connectors on the same cable, one for power and one for data, the GOFlex only has one)

So have you tried plugging into the other usb port?

Alternatively if you have a powered usb hub try plugging the hd into that and then the hub into the WDTV - though wait a minute it may not be able to deal with a hub

Yeah, i did try with both USB ports, same result, so i moved some of the larger files OFF the drive and tried again. seems to work now. it has trouble with files over 1.5GB so far in my experience. that and i also have 120GB of downloaded fansubbed anime on the drive, as well.

That shouldnt be. I've played 12gb files with mine.

Have you updated the firmware recently?

not yet, i did update it several months ago, after the update-bricks-units scare, but i haven't plugged a network cable into it yet to recheck for updates. i will try that tonight

You might want to give b-rads firmware a try.

okay last night i plugged a network cable into the box, and it found 2 updates - 1.3 and 1.4. i downloaded ind installed both of them, and the responsiveness of the unit is much quicker! i think that may have solved it, but i haven't put any larger movies back onto the drive, so maybe i will give that a try later.