Portable HDD question - not powering from TV

[hermosabeach]

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00O5W2B74...S1ZVCSFFWRCZ5Q

[hermosabeach]

https://www.costco.com/seagate-backup-plus-ultra-touch-2tb-portable-hard-drive-with-rescue-data-recovery-services.product.100492574.html

[the86d]

Some TVs will only see a certain sized device, depending on the USB chipset, I think... and only videos they were designed to play, I assume.

For something like you want to do, maybe a Firestick, or other Android based TV streamer, with a USB hub?

[Fizz]

You're probably right that the ampacity of the TV-USB isn't enough for the drive. Can you hear the drive spin up and activate? Do the LED lights act the same in the TV as they do in the PC?

The drive you posted is USB 3.0 - USB 3.0 as a standard can deliver more power than USB 2.0. Also, not every USB device (like your TV) necessarily adheres to 'standards.' The drive 'should' work in either 2.0 or 3.0 ports, but 'should' with technology doesn't mean will.

There's also the matter of the drive format, if the drives makes normal noises/lights but isn't recognized, it may not be formatted in a way the TV understands. The TV should offer to format it if it recognizes a drive at all, but this is make/model dependent.

You may be able to work around this by using a powered USB hub, but your TV may not like/recognize the hub. This offloads the TV from needing to supply power.

Honestly you're probably just better off sticking with what you know works. Replace the 2.5 inch drive with a 3.5 in USB enclosure with external power.

[ocabj]

99% sure this is simply a case of the USB port on the host device not having enough power output on the bus. External power for the drive is solution.

That cable you linked to should work.

[Uncivil Engineer]

Another option might be to use a powered USB hub. They should bring enough power but the question is will the tv address the drive connected by a hub.

[Robotron2k84]

OP, you don’t mention if the TV’s USB ports are 2.x or 3.0?

If 2.x, the maximum amperage is 2.1A, or about 15W max. 15W is barely enough to spin a 3.5” platter drive, bare, and a 2.5” drive uses around 7W. But, with the 5->12V conversion (80-90% efficiency) for the motor and draw from the logic controller, an external 2.5” drive probably comes close to that 15W limit. That drive is listed as USB 3/C, so an A or B port won’t supply the required power unless it’s USB 3.0 SuperSpeed or USB-C.

On top of that, the 2.1A is only in BC (battery charge) mode, hence not available while data pins are active. Most TVs don’t even max out the USB 2.x bus’ amperage and generally only output 0.5-1A at 5V, so 2.5-5W. Only USB PD (power delivery mode) has the capacity for driving larger motors. PD mode is what USB-C uses for laptops and other higher-current devices. Again, data pins are off in that mode.

You could get away with an SSD on USB 2.x power, only.

If the TV has USB 3.0, then it should have markings on the back of the TV as to what capacity it supports.

The power spec of 3.0 goes up to something like 3.4A, but again in BC mode, (unless super-speed 3.0 / USB-C, which it appears this drive is, so 3.0A @ 5V) and 0.9A otherwise, so obviously plenty to drive spinning rust, but the TV still will likely limit that amount and not support USB-C, which is a subset of 3.0. Confusing, I know.

Powered hub would be my suggestion, but check with the TV manufacturer, as some TVs only work with mass-storage devices as direct-attached. If that’s the case, you’ll need to re-home the drive to an enclosure with external power. The dual-connector USB cord idea probably still doesn’t have enough power if the TV is only putting out 1A @ 5V per port, or less.

.

[ldsnet]

Not a power issue, but a firmware/hardware issue within your (not so smart) TV; the larger the external drive, the smarter the hardware inside your TV needs to be to access it.
I have the same issue with a bunch of hardware. My TV will read a USB memory stick no issues, but not directly from any of my 2TB drives.

[ibanezfoo]

My first thought was power too but he said he plugs it into the wall... The USB ports on my TVs only output like 500mah

Could be a size issue or a file system issue. Do you know how it was formatted? FAT32, NTFS, HFS, XFS, BTRFS, etc? The OS in your TV might not be able to read that particular filesystem or partition size. TV OSs in general are pretty crappy. A test would be to get another drive and format it (assuming using Windows) as FAT32 and see if your TV can read it. If it does, there you go. If it doesn't, try NTFS and try again. Then you will find your answer. ** DONT FORMAT A DRIVE WITH ANY INFO ON IT THAT YOU DONT WANT TO LOSE ** Should be obvious but not everyone understands all this stuff.

[ocabj]

I was reading the original post and it indicates it's USB only on the new drive and there is no external power. The external power was referring to his old enclosure. The drive referenced in the URL in the followup post definitely doesn't have external power (AC adapter).

Although, the filesystem of the drive is definitely something that should be double checked. But most drives not sold for Apple/Mac will have a FAT32 fs.

[Harry Ono]

A PC will have wide range of drivers to read USB memory devices. A TV may be limited to certain USB devices like a stick but not accept HD at all.

[ibanezfoo]

I was reading the original post and it indicates it's USB only on the new drive and there is no external power. The external power was referring to his old enclosure. The drive referenced in the URL in the followup post definitely doesn't have external power (AC adapter).

Although, the filesystem of the drive is definitely something that should be double checked. But most drives not sold for Apple/Mac will have a FAT32 fs.

[JayEyeTee831]

make and model of your tv? my old samsung only does photos, not videos

[Uncivil Engineer]

A PC will have wide range of drivers to read USB memory devices. A TV may be limited to certain USB devices like a stick but not accept HD at all.

A USB drive and memory stick use the same mass storage driver. About the only the only hardware problem would be power as drives can easily pull more than the original spec would allow. Externally powering the drive should help with that. A there might be a size issue but that would most likely show up as a file system incompatibility. Where because of the size the drive is exfat but the TV only supports something like Fat16. If it's a reasonable new TV I wouldn't expect that to be an issue. Ounce the tv has access to the file system at that point you might run into file type support issues. So are you trying to play mpegs, Avi, mkv, etc. Realize that most video formats are themselves containers that support multiple codecs so it's possible to support the file format but not the codec. Which is really a long way to say if you can see the files and even open them it still might not be able to display the data inside.