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AndresonJemmie's avatar
AndresonJemmie
Newbie
4 years ago

TCL Roku TV using a Seagate 4TB drive to play movies (.mp4)

I am in the process of digitizing my entire DVD collection (575 DVDs). I want to play my movies on my Roku TV via Roku Media Player via an external hard drive vis a USB. TCL Roku TV Model: 49S405 (Roku TV 7104X) Software version: 9.4.0 build 4200-30 Seagate 4TB Backup Plus Drive USB 3.0 (box says backward compatible to USB 2.0) After digitizing a few movies I tried attaching to the TV using the included USB 3.0 cable. Roku Media Player won't recognize the drive. Someone told me it could be the formatting type. The 4TB hard drive will format to NTFS or ExFat. Roku Media Player will not recognize the drive with either format. 1. Could it be the TV doesn't recognize the drive because it is a USB 3.0 (even though it says backward compatible to USB 2.0)? Would using a powered USB 2.0 bridge help? 2. Could it be that the TV doesn't recognize NTFS or ExFat formatting? A 500gb portable drive plugged into a TV USB port formatted to Fat32 works just fine with 2 of the same movies (.mp4) I tried on the 4TB drive. I just don't want to use multiple drives for my library. Thanks for any help!

4 Replies

  • Tim_Hare's avatar
    Tim_Hare
    Roku Guru
    4 years ago

    At this support article they talk about all the filesystems supported. NTFS is supported, ExFAT is not.

    This support article discusses what to do if it doesn't recognize your drive.  One possibility is that the Roku can't supply enough power to your drive and it discusses what to do then.  If you don't have an external power adapter for the drive, then one option is to attach a powered USB hub to the USB port on the Roku and attach the drive to the powered hub.

    I'm not expert  so please read the articles too.

    • Timeschange1961's avatar
      Timeschange1961
      Newbie
      4 years ago

      Solved: I have 2 new 5Tb drives that myRoku ultra would not recognize so i used a free program (AOMEI partition assistant 9.5) to delete the partition that had the backup software on it and then deleted the the main partition. Then I created a partition using the wholw drive. I formated it and after loading it with mp4 video it recognized and played without any problems (worked for both external drives one is a 5TB and one is a 4TB). It seems as though the backup software that is in a bootable partition was the culprit. Hope this helps anyone else with this problem.

  • farnandez's avatar
    farnandez
    Reel Rookie
    4 years ago

    I saw in another post (can't find it right now) that the issue is the amount of time it takes to deal with a large drive. Someone else had an 8TB drive and determined they just needed to wait long enough for it to "recognize" the drive - I have no idea what it is doing during that time, but possibly building an index into the content?