My NTFS USB hard drive has been connected to my Roku 3 for a couple of years and has always worked perfectly. Tonight my Roku software was updated and suddenly it cannot recognize my hard drive anymore. I removed the drive and connected it to my computer to make sure it hadn't failed. It was working perfectly. I reattached it to my Roku 3 and the usual prompt appeared asking me if I wanted to open the newly attached drive. But when the Roku Media Player opened and I selected "ALL" I was met with an info screen that basically was telling me no drive could be found. I am not sure what to do now.
You'll find other posts reporting this in the "community". It only seems to affect Roku 3 devices and software version 11. Roku knows about it, but there's been no comment about when it may be fixed.
Still no response to me from Roku.
What I think is happening is they somehow broke support for the NTFS file system which is used on larger drives. Small thumb drives usually use FAT - which is why your (and my) small USB drives will still work.
NTFS is a newer file system than FAT and can handle larger volumes and file sizes; I'd guess they didn't disable NTFS intentionally. It makes sense that they fix it but who knows if or when?
Thanks for the post.
I have passed along your concerns and information to the appropriate Roku team to investigate further.
Once more information is available, I'll be sure to update this Community thread.
Thanks,
Danny
@RokuDanny-R Thank you Danny !
@RokuDanny-R can confirm that the issues i am having are exactly the same as @AirMojo . Thank you for your help and hope for a solution.
Somebody at ROKU forgot to add NFTS format to the new software update.
It does recognize FAT 32 format, which means you will have to reformat your USB or hard drive, just make sue you save your media on another drive, or you will lose it all when reformatting.
I would just wait a couple of days, I am sure ROKU will see the mistake and correct it..
This is why I am reluctant to upgrade my Roku as a possible solution. I want to know that a Roku Ultra, or whatever, will support my NTFS external drive. Buying a device and returning it if it fails is a costly solution.
Same as all the others. After update to ver 11 on April 20, 2022 media player will not recognize external USB hard drive but will recognize thumb drive (???). Tried different size drives and different file systems (NTFS, FAT32, exFAT). Will someone please wake up the knucklehead that's responsible for this egregious error and get it fixed? It would be nice if we, the users, were notified of updates and given the choice to update.
This problem has been reported in some other recent threads:
Unclear if Roku is working on it.