Important Notice Regarding Single USB Drives Greater than 2 TB's and WD TV Products

[Mopheus]

One question, are 2 Tb disks affected by this problem ? I'd like to get a 2 Tb disk with a case or a 2 Tb WD Elements case but not sure if will have problems or not.

Thanks.

[TonyPh12345]

No, it's GREATER than 2TB, so 2TB is fine as long as that drive is not using Advance Formatting.

[Cocovanna]

IIRC, some 2T drives should be reformatted before using them with the WD. You'll have to search the forum for details (or try it out before you fill the drive with data).

Cocovanna

[mstinso]

WHAT? That is more then frustrating. Im glad I dont yet have a large 3 gb drive like others here. But data curruption and loosing all your info = frustration? Their better be an immediate firmware to not even allow access to these drives so data loss does not happen. WOW. People use these external harddrives as their backup drives or as their only source of data storage.

This is a very seroius issue.

I am looking at the date of this post and see its about 2 months old and hope this situation is corrected but I am complelty floored by WD stance and responce here. I seroiusly hope WD is paying the restore cost here on peoples drives that were damaged here as a result.

[jlrippeth]

Rather than taking the time to try this I would like to ask if splitting the 3tb drive into smaller partitions woujld make it useable?

Thanks for your reply

jlr

[TonyPh12345]

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jlrippeth wrote:

Rather than taking the time to try this I would like to ask if splitting the 3tb drive into smaller partitions woujld make it useable?

Thanks for your reply

jlr

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I believe that several people have successfully done that.

[steel]

unfortunately, i found this community not before but after i connected a 3 TB WD-Drive with my newly bought media player. first, the drive has not been recognised by the player any more. When again connecting the drive with my notebook, i was really shocked when seeing, that Windows Explorer showed the drive with a sive of 678 GB instead of 3 TB. In addition, hundreds of my files were now zero kb-files! to make the storry even worst, this happend  to 2 TB drives to (size is shown correctly, but no files on the drive!).

having this in mind, i'd like to ask the WD-stuff for a more constructive answer than "formatting the drive" as stated on page 1 of this thread. What do i have to do to recover the files on my drives?

yours sincerely

mk

[jakeman1075]

I woudn't consider your network access much of a solution as it just does not seem to work.  I must say after being a proud consumer of WD hard drives I am so very upset that WD has sullied their once fine name with this piece of trash.  It has a flaky network connection, I have been dealing with an inability to access network shares for 5 months or so now, even had a WD technician remotely access my PC and begin uninstalling things to get it working, disabling media shares, uninstalling several programs including anti virus and still no solution to the network share problem. 

I realize that I am straying off topic here but I cannot help but be surprised by the WD response that the network access is a solution.  The only thing that works with this box is the access to windows media library, which I have been able to do just fine with my PS3 for several years now, and further more the PS3 is more reliable and does not drop network connections every time i scrool too fast down my library list.  The primary reason I bought the WDlive Plus was so that I could directly access network shares in order to be able to play files that are not included in the media libraries, (Eg. .mkv, .flac, as well as subtitle files like .srt etc...)  This feature only worked for about the first 2-3 weeks of having this device, it has been nothing but a head ache since.

In short I do not know what kind of Fisher Price network solution you have plastered on this device, I'm told this is a result in changes to the WIndows security protocol, I was also told several months ago that this would be addressed ina firmware release.  Well it has not happened yet.  **bleep** I couldn't even get the shares seen from an XP machine.  And yet I'm able to access the shares with any other computer in our house including a Mac book.

I am quite upset at WD for putting such an unstable device out on the market, either fix this box and get it working right or stick to making hard drives.  From my experience this device has done nothing but ruin a once great brand name.

[TonyPh12345]

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jakeman1075 wrote:

In short I do not know what kind of Fisher Price network solution you have plastered on this device, I'm told this is a result in changes to the WIndows security protocol, I was also told several months ago that this would be addressed ina firmware release.  Well it has not happened yet. 

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It's using SAMBA, which is an industry standard rock solid protocol suite.

The issue you're referring to about a network sharing issue resolved via a firmware update WAS resolved in a firmware update quite a few months ago.

In short, if your network and servers are stable, the WD Live "Share" networking elements are rock solid.   I've been using the WD's for over well over a year now, and the ONLY hiccups that ever happened was the "Windows Live Essentials" debacle that was corrected when WD upgraded to the most recent version of SAMBA available, and a bug in the Linksys E3000 which causes it to assume the role of Master Browser even when sharing is DISABLED, and it's a role it doesn't perform well at all.

So, I doubt that will help you.   But I can tell you from countless experiences helping other users here, it's most likely a problem on your network...   This can be backed up by the dozens of frequent visitors here that also use the Network Share function with no issues at all.

[wevowva]

I'm sorry...  I don't flame and am generally a reasonable guy on boards, but this is unconscionable.  Luckily for me I have a 2T elements drive which seems to be o.k., but I would be LIVID if I'ld set up gigs of data from a PC and plugged it into the HD only to have it permanently mangled.  No warning on the WDTV packaging?  No firmware safeguard to preempt ruining the partition... no foresight BEFORE the launch of at least the 3G WD drives?      I love this little unit, and have worked around it's many eccentricities, but WOW!!!