My small 2.5' external drives show on pc but won't show up on my media center, which is what I bought them for. This is obviously an inadequet power problem, at least that's my guess. I've even tried routing them through a powered hub to no avail. Does anyone out there have an idea how to kick these in the butt a little to get them to show? The storage issue the bane of my HTPC experience, not to mention most expensive.
external hard drives for HTPC
- Thread starter bellintl
- Start date
Thanks for the lightning fast reply. It's not WMC media center rather a free standing black box type media center/player. The same problem occurs when I connect via USB to any PC. I can feel the drive spinning in the ext.HDD but nothing shows under the "computer" tab.
everlost
Honorable
- Mar 8, 2013
- 167
- 0
- 10,710
sorry, i read HTPC and made an assumption. if the HDD is spinning, it has enough power. your problem could still be file system related. if your using windows on your computer, you right click My Computer and choose Manage to open Computer Manager where you have Disk Management. if the ext.HDD is there it probably just needs to be formated to a file system supported by both your OS and media box. fat32 is a safe bet, but check the media box manual. if its not on the list, you could have a bad cable, external case, or HDD. i assume when you say 2.5" external drive that its a HDD in a case...
Thanks your time and help is appreciated. Yes they're primarily Toshiba 2.5' ext HDD in case. I've had this before with full size 3.5' where I could feel them spinning also but they wouldn't come up in PC. Then I'd try swapping a couple different power adapters and voila they'ed come up, leading me to assume the adapters were starting to deteriorate. Problem with the little 2.5'' guys is they don't have this external power input and this is why I've been thinking the power they get is just not enough. Your suggestion is good advice however and I will look at compatability as the potential problem. And, again Thx!!!
Thanks your time and help is appreciated. Yes they're primarily Toshiba 2.5' ext HDD in case. I've had this before with full size 3.5' where I could feel them spinning also but they wouldn't come up in PC. Then I'd try swapping a couple different power adapters and voila they'ed come up, leading me to assume the adapters were starting to deteriorate. Problem with the little 2.5'' guys is they don't have this external power input and this is why I've been thinking the power they get is just not enough. Your suggestion is good advice however and I will look at compatability as the potential problem. And, again Thx!!!
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