UPDATE!!! 4/26/2022 10PM EDT
I just updated to BUILD 4184-11
And my external USB HDD is now working in Roku Media Player.
They've resolved it!
Update your firmware!
I posted a very similar issue to this Support over two weeks ago. It is title "Roku 3 no longer recognizes Seagate external USB". Unfortunately I do not know how to send you a link to this in a reply.
I believe you are still here.
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You can always go to your Profile, see where you last posted, go to that posting, and then copy the address from your web browser. Then just paste. (Or you can use the little chain icon above).
Thanks!!!
I too have same problem.
Hisense TV model:32H4+
Roku TV 5227X
S/N:2N004T536660
S/W:11.0.0 - build 4180-11
USB DRIVE: WD My Book Essential (External HD)
Recent firmware update rendered my WD External 2TB Hard drive unavailable. Using Roku Media Player app shows my Server's media center thru WiFi, but no longer shows my USB drive connection. Drive is formatted as NTFS, and has multiple media formats. While I don't get an error code, or anything related to a problem, I cannot get it to recognize the drive. Happened immediately after update to 11.
It would be tremendously helpful to have a "rollback" or "downrev" option to go back to last version of firmware until this issue can be resolved.
UPDATE!!! 4/26/2022 10PM EDT
I just updated to BUILD 4184-11
And my external USB HDD is now working in Roku Media Player.
They've resolved it!
Update your firmware!
Thanks so much for letting us know about a working update.! I truly appreciate it! I hooked mine back up and it is recognized and playing a video. Yay!
Thank you tech team!
kleinzeit
I had the same problem on 2 different TVs with both Roku 3 and Roku 4. Kleinzeit's post pointed me in the right direction for a workaround. The only USB input into my Rokus is via 128GB USB sticks which were formatted NTFS. I copied the sticks to my PC, reformatted as FAT32 (NOT exFAT32!), reloaded, and was back in business. I suspect the problem is either sloppy testing or planned obsolescence.
In general I default to incompetence rather than malice as an explanation. One might assume that if it was intentional, Roku wouldn’t continue to claim on the error screen (which appears when trying to access my drive) that NTFS is supported. But maybe not.
It’s an irritating problem exacerbated by Roku, who are aware of it, not saying it they intend to fix it or not. For all we know it’ll be fixed by tomorrow and your hassle of reformatting a drive was a waste of time. Or maybe they’ll never fix it and we must all make another plan. Poor testing, poor communication.
Anyway, I’m glad you have a solution.
A year later now I'm having the same problem, Two of my Roku devices do NOT recognize USB external, either flash or hard drive with the ext4 file system. what gives?
it does work with a fat32 filesystem, so obviously some coder forgot to add the other file types?
Other Roku users or Roku support will need to handle this one. I used my Roku last night (7/7/23) with an external hard drive and had no problem. Sorry I cannot be of more assistance.
