AVIs on DVD player via USB HDD

Snaggerman

Hi Guys
Hopefully someone can give me advise on this one. Just picked up a mickey mouse DVD player with USB port. Thought (stupidly) I'd nothing to do only connect my 250g external HD and sit back and watch all those films I'd 'bought' off u-torrent:). No joy, 'no readable files' error on player. eventually figured (ok, googled) that player won't recognise NTFS system. It plays fine from 2g flash drive. My friend google tells me to convert to fat32, but if I do that, surely I'll lose all the data on the HD? Cant transfer/backup everything to pc or laptop, combined drives aren't big enough, have about 200g of data and only about 50g free between them. Not even sure if converting will work, haven't a clue if DVD is USB 1.1 or 2. Its a Lenco DVD-320, f all info about it on the net and manual was written by a chinese/japanese 4yo in double dutch! Any ideas or suggestions greatly appreciated, novena to St. Home Entertainment for all respondents:)

Thanks

PS, not 100% sure of the conversion process either

Slaphead07

eh? While not exactly the solution to your specific problem all I do is copy the movie from the PC to a USB key and plug it into the player. Off ye go! No biggie and nothing needs to be reformatted.

Snaggerman

Yeah, that works fine I know, but I've got about 200 or so films for the kids and just want to access them like with sky+, direct from the library as such.

Slaphead07

ah, then a reformat is unavoidable. Copy all the movies to the HD, reformat the external HD and copy them back. Job done. Yeah, I know I'm stating the bloody obvious!

In short there's no quick fix for you, a reformat and a bit of file moving and it's done for ever.

Snaggerman

Thought so, any tips on the actual reformatting?

Cheers

Slaphead07

sorry man, I'd head to google meself but the guys around here will know exactly what you need to do. I did it years ago and it was straight forward.

Snaggerman

Cheers bud, ta anyway!

Idleater

Snaggerman wrote: »

Thought so, any tips on the actual reformatting?

Cheers

In windows do you not just click on the drive in my computer and select format... From the tools menu?

ElNino

If you use the Convert command you won't lose any data. Check out this link:
http://www.ntfs.com/quest3.htm

GAAman

Does your computer have a dvd burner? If so burn your stuff onto a load of dvd's, format the drive then you can copy back from the dvd's plus if anything happens to the external hdd then you have a backup

ISOT

Snaggerman wrote: »

Thought so, any tips on the actual reformatting?

Cheers

Here is a handy free application that I use for reformatting drives into different file systems:
http://www.compuapps.com/download/swissknife/Swissknife.htm

Just be aware that some usb equipped dvd players have issues with recognising large hard drives regardless or how they are formatted.
Also, altough it probably does not apply to you (i presume that your hard drive has its own power supply), smaller external usb drives sometimes do not receive enough power from the dvd usb port to work. In that case you need a double usb cable and a wall usb transformer.

I personally gave up using the hard drive and just copied about 18 movies onto as 16gb sd card and inserted into the usb port on the dvd player using a sd card reader. You will fit a lot of kids stuff on a 16gb card and they are getting pretty cheap now.

Snaggerman

nereid wrote: »

In windows do you not just click on the drive in my computer and select format... From the tools menu?

See that now, thanks nereid

ISOT, I have a buddy who has his 500gig external hd up and running on a philips dvd player. I'm going to borrow his fat32 hd to see if it works with my dvd, although I suspect it prob won't. I'll let you guys know how I get on. If the dvd can recognise it, I can drag my files to it and reformat mine. If not, suppose I'll have to go with the flash drive method

Thanks everyone for all your advice