External HD with Kodi / Openelec on RPi2 question

DavisBXL

Hi all,

I'm wondering if anyone can shed any light on this:

I recently bought a new Raspberry Pi 2 given the increase in power compared to the original Pi 1 B+ I've had for the last while. Made a fresh install of openelec (latest 5.08) with any problems. However, the new Pi 2 refuses to read the external HD I used to locally store my media files for the older Pi.

The HD is a portable Seagate 1TB which doesn't have its own power. I used it with a powered Amazon USB hub on the old Pi, and simply connected it to the new one. The HD lights up to read, flashes calmly and then simply powers down. If i connect the Seagate HD directly to the Pi 2 it just clicks and doesn't read; presumably as a result of the lack of power.

An existing thumb drive I had left in the hub reads no problem when switching to the Pi 2. If I navigate to the root folder>var>media, the thumb drive shows up and the Seagate HD is nowhere to be found. Just to clarify - the HD still reads fine when connected to a laptop. It's formatted as NTFS, which I see online as ok if high work for the CPU.

Any ideas? I am willing to reformat the drive if necessary. I've read about formatting as ext4 on the Pi itself, but that sounds like a right pain unless I know its going to make it work.

Thanks in advance!

Stuxnet

Sounds like lack of power. Formatting to ext4 over ntfs wont make any difference if its juice related. MY raspberry 2 wont even read from a usb 3 thumb device I have, but no issues off a hdd that's externally powered. The Rpi2 was built to use less power then Rpi 1 afaik.

DavisBXL

Thanks for the reply (and sorry for the delay - didn't get the email alert for some reason).

Still scratching my head why the HD wouldn't pull enough power from the powered hub, but sounds like my best solution for now is to move to a powered HD and then tinker with the original HD afterwards to see if I can get it back working.

Cheers!

Johnboy1951

Is there sufficient power being supplied to the Pi from its PSU?
That PSU is used to power both the Pi and attachments.

I found a couple of dongles I use regularly on PCs are a bit dodgy power wise for my Pi set up.

DavisBXL

Thanks for the input. Just sorted it out - dodgy power cable was the cause! That's a relief

Cheers