If you've been considering buying a brand new external hard drive to plug into your TV's USB port for media playback, you might want to reconsider. Things aren't as simple as they might seem.
The drive will not be visible on the PC if you do not allocate a drive letter or a drive name. The issue may also occur due to some of the system components conflicting with Windows 10 operating system on the PC. While some drives can draw enough power from your computer's USB port, others—especially larger drives not intended to be portable— may require wall power to spin up. If your drive came with an AC. I have connected my external hard drive to my new iPad pro. All the files show up ok on the iPad but all photos are faded and difficult to see. There are no messages coming up about a lack of power or anything else. The hard drive is a Toshiba 500gig. Document files and letters etc show up ok but photos are faded and unresponsive. My laptop hard drive (with all its partitions) shows up as sda, as do my two other external drives (the music and photos etc ones), as sdb and sdc. But this other new Iomega drive - although its light lights up suggesting it is getting power - simply does not appear in GParted at all.
Not every external hard drive will play nice with your smart TV right out the gate.
Why don't all external hard drives work with my TV?
Regardless of their size, many new external hard and SSD drives usually rely on a partitioning format called GUID Partition Table (GPT).
GPT allows the entire capacity of the drive to be usable on a computer system. However, this very same partitioning format may not be recognised by your TV. It's one of those things that's very dependent on the brand and model involved.
What's more, if you plug a GPT-based drive into a TV, it might show up as being recognised by the TV, but it will not be able to display any of the information that you may have previously put onto it. We recently found this out when we plugged in a 3TB WD Elements (Amazon) hard drive into a 32-inch Samsung LA32C450E1D LCD TV and found it couldn't be read.
How can I fix this problem?
The solution is a harsh and time-consuming one: you'll have to re-partition the drive so that it uses an MBR (Master Boot Record) partition instead. This is far from an ideal solution because it means that only up to 2TB of space will be usable on a 3TB or 4TB hard drive.
Now, no matter how you slice it, this space is being wasted. But at least now there is a chance that the data on your new external drive will be able to be correctly detected and read by your TV.
[Related: How to tell if you're watching 4K video]
All data on the disk will be erased if you attempt to change the drive's partition type from GPT to MBR, so you should make sure that you have a copy of all your data on another drive prior to changing it.
To change a drive's partition type from GPT to MBR in Windows 7, you will first need to launch the disk manager. You can go there by right-clicking Computer from the Start menu, selecting Manage and then Disk Management. Then, right-click on the drive's label and convert it to MBR.
You can then create a new partition and format it using the NTFS file format.
If your TV does not support the NTFS file format, but prefers the Fat32 format instead, then you will need to download a third party utility to convert your NTFS drive to Fat32 — since Windows 7 cannot do this natively.
Note - As opposed to Windows 7, the latest version of Windows 10 can convert drives to Fat32 natively. Simply follow the same process mentioned above and select Fat32 instead of NTFS.
One go-to application that has worked well for us in the past is Fat32format. It's a relatively straightforward utility to use:
Select the correct drive that you wish to format (double-check to make sure that you have the right one)
Leave the file allocation unit size of 32768 bytes (as you'll be storing large media files on it rather than tiny files)
Click the start button. It should only take a few seconds to format.
Again, all this isn't an ideal solution for a 3TB or 4TB drive. Unfortunately, it's a necessary one for the moment if you've bought a large-capacity external drives and are looking to use them as a media repository for a TV.
That being said, there is nifty way to game the system. If you are currently shopping for a hard drive that can be used to play media through your TV's USB port, try to stick to drives that are less than 2TB in size, that way no space will be wasted if you need to convert the drive's format.
This article was updated in 2020 by Fergus Halliday.
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This article was originally written by Elias Plastiras and published on the 19th of August, 2012. It was updated by Fergus Halliday on the 14th of September, 2020.
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Sometimes, Windows 10 computer users face a complex problem where the installed SSD drive doesn't show up in the PC menu or in the Windows File Explorer. Don't worry; we are here to help out and fix the problem.
How To Fix SSD Not Showing Up On Windows 10
Let's see all the case issues and determine how the SSD Not Showing Up issue can be resolved for Windows 10 users.
I. SSD Not Showing Up – Because Drive Letter Is Missing
When you create a partition on a drive or even try to rename any part of it, you must ensure that the letter assigned to that drive does not conflict with that of another, and is not invalid. Two drives assigned the same letter will cause the Windows 10 OS not to recognize the new one. In such a scenario, you can always assign a new letter to the drive and get the issue fixed.
Step 1: Right-click on Start Button and select Disk Management.
Step 2: Right-click on the disk partition, which is not showing up on the computer.
Step 3: Select Change Drive Letter and Paths.
Step 4: In a new small pop-up, head to the Change tab.
Step 5: Assign a new letter to the drive and save changes.
Restart PC and check.
Read More: How To Recover Data From Formatted Hard Drive 2020
II. SSD Not Showing Up – Because the SSD is Not Initialized
I. SSD Not Showing Up – Because Drive Letter Is Missing
When you create a partition on a drive or even try to rename any part of it, you must ensure that the letter assigned to that drive does not conflict with that of another, and is not invalid. Two drives assigned the same letter will cause the Windows 10 OS not to recognize the new one. In such a scenario, you can always assign a new letter to the drive and get the issue fixed.
Step 1: Right-click on Start Button and select Disk Management.
Step 2: Right-click on the disk partition, which is not showing up on the computer.
Step 3: Select Change Drive Letter and Paths.
Step 4: In a new small pop-up, head to the Change tab.
Step 5: Assign a new letter to the drive and save changes.
Restart PC and check.
Read More: How To Recover Data From Formatted Hard Drive 2020
II. SSD Not Showing Up – Because the SSD is Not Initialized
It is a possibility that the new SSD is not showing up because the disk drive has not been initialized. This sometimes also results in an error – Disk Unknown or not Initialized.
In both such situations, you must head to the disk management and initialize the concerned disk drive.
Step 1: Open Disk Management just like we did in the first case.
Step 2: Right-click on the SSD partition that's not showing up. The disk will be marked as 'Not Initialized'.
Step 3: Select the Initialize Disk.
Step 4: In the new dialog box, select the preferred partition style and click on OK.
Note. The partition styles, Master Boot Record (MBT) works with all previous versions of the Windows, whereas, the older Windows 10 OS versions may not recognize GUID Partition Table (GPT).
Read More: How To Fix External Hard Drive Not Showing In Windows
Read More: The Best Hard Drive Health Check Software For Windows
III. SSD Not Showing Up – Because of Disk Driver Issues
It is highly possible that the SSD is not showing up in the explorer or this PC because of an issue associated with disk drivers. You must regularly update these drivers to avoid any potential issue of such kind.
Drivers can be updated the old-school way from the Windows 10 Device Manager; however, you can always use Advanced Driver Updater.
External Hard Drive Doesn't Show Up
Advanced Driver Updater is an automatic driver updater tool that scans and downloads/installs all available driver updates in a single click.
Step 1: Open Advanced Driver Updater.
Step 2: Scan for driver updates.
Step 3: Mark and select the driver updates found (if any).
Step 4: Let the driver update the process, run, and finish.
Step 5: Click on Update All. The button won't be a highlight in case there is no update available.
Step 6: Restart the PC for the driver updates to take effect.
Read More: Oops! l Accidentally Deleted A Hard Drive Partition On Windows 10! Now What?
Conclusion
SSD or any other storage media can get faulty or suffer a malfunction. Like every other electronic equipment, SSD drives can also fail, and that can result in loss of data. Unless the drive has undergone significant hardware damage, you can always recover the lost data for this try using Advanced Disk Recovery. Nonetheless, outdated and corrupt drivers also create problems hence, keeping them updated is a must. For this use the best driver updater tool Advanced Driver Updater that helps detect and update outdated, corrupt drivers in just a few clicks.
Win 10 Not Seeing External Hard Drive
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