Iomega hard drive problem please help!

stedabee

yoyo wrote: »

It looks like you may need to "repair permissions" on the drive, not saying this will help, but have a read here someone having similar issues

Nick

No luck software keeps stalling. Being doing alot of reading all i can find is people saying you have to format to FAT32 to make it read and write but in order to do that you have to erase which in turn will bring me back to not working with the tv.....its just a big circle.

yoyo

stedabee wrote: »

No luck software keeps stalling. Being doing alot of reading all i can find is people saying you have to format to FAT32 to make it read and write but in order to do that you have to erase which in turn will bring me back to not working with the tv.....its just a big circle.

The main issue is the drive must be formatted in Windows as FAT32 as if you attempt to format it to FAT32 in Mac this will also erase the hard drives codecs and player tools. I don't see why a Mac wouldn't write to a FAT32 drive regardless.
I'll move this over to the Mac forum for you, where you will hopefully get a better response. There are also drivers you can buy for OSX which will write data to NTFS partitions, which may possibly be a workaround.

Nick

Torqay

stedabee wrote: »

Are these things good? Is it a hard drive too or just a streaming device?

WD TV Live just "the box", no hard drive. You can connect any HDD or USB stick. You can stream over a network. And yes, they are good.

Torqay

yoyo wrote: »

I'll move this over to the Mac forum for you, where you will hopefully get a better response.

The restoration of the Firmware after deletion or formatting has to be done in Windows, Iomega does not offer a Mac utility for that.

stedabee

yoyo wrote: »

The main issue is the drive must be formatted in Windows as FAT32 as if you attempt to format it to FAT32 in Mac this will also erase the hard drives codecs and player tools. I don't see why a Mac wouldn't write to a FAT32 drive regardless.
I'll move this over to the Mac forum for you, where you will hopefully get a better response. There are also drivers you can buy for OSX which will write data to NTFS partitions, which may possibly be a workaround.

Nick

k finally i got it to work, so what i did was when i went to disk utilities and selected the hard drive there were four drop downs disk1s1-disk1s2-linux swap and untitled. All of them except untitled were FAT32 so i changed the last one hoping it wouldn't erase the update and thankfully it didnt, so its read and write now. So i checked with the tv and that works perfectly too.......good news AY!! So then i put one movie on and go to play and it wont, it says file not recognized which was a mp4, so i put a avi and mkv and it will only play a avi.

Well at least i got it now read and write but now i have to find a way to make it recognize all media files???? Problems never seem to end ??

stedabee

Torqay wrote: »

The restoration of the Firmware after deletion or formatting has to be done in Windows, Iomega does not offer a Mac utility for that.

So do you think i should do this even though i have it working now from the mac ? only problem is its only reading avi files? If i format with windows should i be then able to transfer files from mac to hard drive?

muggyog

Just an observation. This media player is Windows centric and the firmware ( Linux based?) and formatting is designed that way. The issue with Mac is that natively it will read/write to Fat32 but not NTFS. The default format on the media player is NTFS and the firmware is on a second partition. The second partition is indicated by the

When prompted, choose Keep Multimedia Data OR Remove All Data and click Next. The installer will take approximately 1-2 minutes to copy the firmware update files to the ScreenPlay Plus.

in the firmware install instructions and your comments regarding the 'four dropdowns'. You have got round the Windows procedure for formatting by formating the data partition (untitled) to Fat32 on the Mac. Iomega recommend this method to format to Fat32. If you think you need to reformat through Windows use this method.

Regarding your issue with the playing of filetypes, .MKV has a red X here.

stedabee

muggyog wrote: »

Just an observation. This media player is Windows centric and the firmware ( Linux based?) and formatting is designed that way. The issue with Mac is that natively it will read/write to Fat32 but not NTFS. The default format on the media player is NTFS and the firmware is on a second partition. The second partition is indicated by the
in the firmware install instructions and your comments regarding the 'four dropdowns'. You have got round the Windows procedure for formatting by formating the data partition (untitled) to Fat32 on the Mac. Iomega recommend this method to format to Fat32. If you think you need to reformat through Windows use this method.

Regarding your issue with the playing of filetypes, .MKV has a red X here.

Ye was great to finally solve it but then annoying that I can't play mp4! Just noticed myself that it won't play mkv anyway, would love to know why it won't play mp4???

muggyog

I believe that would be a codec matter!

from http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows7/Codecs-frequently-asked-questions

Are codecs and file formats the same?
No, although it can be confusing because they sometimes have the same name. You can think of a file format as a type of container. Inside the container is data that has been compressed by using a particular codec. For example, a file format such as Windows Media Audio contains data that is compressed by using the Windows Media Audio codec. However, a file format such as Audio Video Interleaved (AVI) can contain data that is compressed by any of a number of different codecs, including the MPEG-2, DivX, or XviD codecs. AVI files can also contain data that is not compressed by any codec. Consequently, you might be able to play some AVI files and not others, depending on which codecs were used to compress the file and which codecs you have installed on your computer. For the same reason, you also might be able to play the audio portion of an AVI file, but not the video portion.

Could be the media player OR the TV has the problem.

Another note is that because the Iomega firmware ( operating system in effect ) is Linux as confirmed by downloading the open source version, if you feel brave/confident/insane, you can run alternative firmware.. Be aware that this project seems to have stopped in 2009 since this is the last entry in superbernys ( programmer ) wiki page.

DubDJ

Unfortunately most media boxes are limited by what file types they'll play. Same problem with a lot of modern TV's with USB ports on the back. Handy to have them but they'll only play certain file types, usually AVI or MP4.

What I done recently for an older TV is pick up a Cyclone Micro 3 box. They're available from Amazon for around €45 delivered. (Cheapest I found it). It works for every movie file i've tried. Comes with a built in 8GB of storage. Supports ExFat format so you can add files over 4GB on an external drive.

But it also has a USB and SD card slot. I picked up this decent 500GB Hard Drive from Amazon for €50. Haven't received it yet but it has good reviews.

They also have cheap Amazon Basic HDMI cables for £3.49 as an Add on item so you'd have to spend over £20 to get it.

So for around €100 for the lot you can add any single file type you want to the 500GB hard drive. Just connect it up to the cyclone box and watch full 1080p HD films through your TV.

If you are thinking of going for a different box instead of the Iomega i'd recommend the above. Great little media boxes. Comes with a remote and also has support for subtitles so you can toggle them on and off.

Made life a lot easier for me. Before this I was burning DVD's which was a time consuming pain!

stedabee

DubDJ wrote: »

Unfortunately most media boxes are limited by what file types they'll play. Same problem with a lot of modern TV's with USB ports on the back. Handy to have them but they'll only play certain file types, usually AVI or MP4.

What I done recently for an older TV is pick up a Cyclone Micro 3 box. They're available from Amazon for around €45 delivered. (Cheapest I found it). It works for every movie file i've tried. Comes with a built in 8GB of storage. Supports ExFat format so you can add files over 4GB on an external drive.

But it also has a USB and SD card slot. I picked up this decent 500GB Hard Drive from Amazon for €50. Haven't received it yet but it has good reviews.

They also have cheap Amazon Basic HDMI cables for £3.49 as an Add on item so you'd have to spend over £20 to get it.

So for around €100 for the lot you can add any single file type you want to the 500GB hard drive. Just connect it up to the cyclone box and watch full 1080p HD films through your TV.

If you are thinking of going for a different box instead of the Iomega i'd recommend the above. Great little media boxes. Comes with a remote and also has support for subtitles so you can toggle them on and off.

Made life a lot easier for me. Before this I was burning DVD's which was a time consuming pain!

Cheers man gonna have a look at these and maybe order one!

DubDJ

stedabee wrote: »

Cheers man gonna have a look at these and maybe order one!

Bit of an option replacing the whole thing but it's probably easier. Plus if the Hard Drive ever fills up you can just upgrade. More cost effective than buying a brand new media box.

stedabee

DubDJ wrote: »

Bit of an option replacing the whole thing but it's probably easier. Plus if the Hard Drive ever fills up you can just upgrade. More cost effective than buying a brand new media box.

Ye very true, this thing is driving me mad and would do anything to sort it so ill probably keep it as a back up hd and buy the one you listed for everything else.