Hi everyone. Love this site
I bought a caravan and after reading some gray nomad posts they rave about the picture quality of the Kogan 24 inch 12volt tv. It seems ok but the sound is like it’s in a tin can. I just bought a sound bar and that fixed that issue
The problem I’m having is it won’t read my 500gb hard drive, it reads and plays music through an 8gb one but not the bigger one, and I’m a Luddite when it comes to this, any suggestions please. I mainly want it to watch movies on the hard drive, it says “device not found”. Thanks heaps
Hard Drive for a Television
Graesy on 06/03/2019 - 18:11
Comments
Your 8GB drive is most likely formatted as FAT32 and your 500GB one will have a different format. You may need to use a third party tool and format the 500GB hard disk to FAT32. If that fails, then most likely your TV doesn't support larger hard disks.
Note: formatting your hard disk means that you will lose everything on it, you will need to copy the files somewhere first, then format your hard disk, then copy them back.
Might try that thanks
Potentially may also not have enough power from the USB ports to run the HDD if not related to the drive formatting
Is the HDD powered via AC, or does it draw from the USB? If the latter, the TV might not support it, as opposed to USB sticks or portable SSDs.
I've only seen external HDDs carry on with insufficient power when I've had more than two in a hub. One HDD should usually be OK, especially on a newer TV.
If you can hear it spin up/clicking repeatedly/flashing LEDs, that's usually indicative of insufficient power - but if it spins up once and stays whirring then it's probably a safe bet the TV can't read the partition formats and there's plenty of power.
Do think if if transfer the files on smaller USB would help? The hard drive is a Hitachi 500 gb and the television is a Kogan 24inchb12 volt unit. I want to free camp and not use 240 volt AC just 12 volt DC
If you're only watching a couple of shows/movies at a time, sure - just use your 8Gb drive as your 'active' drive and the HDD as the 'storage' drive. If you're not confident in wiping a drive, or you haven't got space to temporarily store your movies elsewhere, then go for it.
A slow solution that works, generally trumps a 'better' solution that may or may not work.
If you get sick of this, you can always:
- buy another USB drive for larger 'active' storage (cheap for 64Gb+ nowdays)
- buy another HDD for storing more movies, and set it up to work from the get-go (more expensive, but more space too)
Sometimes it is the format of the hdd.
Whats the model number of your hdd & tv?