Powering off external hard drives with WDTV? Anyone have any ideas for a fix to this ?
1972098
One solution is to turn off the Media Library function in Settings. If you don't need to view all your media by media type in one menu regardless of its location in folders or drives and you don't care to view your content by categories such as genre, album, artist and date... turn off Media Library and completely eliminate the lengthy indexing process. I organize my data in well named folders and thus have no trouble finding what I want... Music &gt; Artist &gt; Album &gt; songs; Movies &gt; movies; TV &gt; shows; Photos &gt; 2008 Skywalk Vacation &gt; Day 1 &gt; pics. On the other hand, I don't need my music playback device to tell me that a Joan Jett song is Rock nor do I play back any of my media by genre like only disco songs. It's a whole lot easier to drop my favorite party music into a folder and play that folder. That's the only way to avoid hearing the horrible Disco Duck stuff as well as to ensure you actually hear the tunes that don't have tags. If you want to keep the Media Library function then you are going to have to tolerate the indexing because, well, how else would the WD TV know what is on your drive? As far as the WD TV knows, you've deleted your Southern Rock and loaded up on Polka. It can't tell without indexing. One other thing I can suggest is to get a faster hard drive if yours is slow. Another suggestion is to, well, do you really need to put every bit of media you own crammed onto a couple giant 750GB drives? Maybe your drives aren't that big but you get my point. My main suggestion is to turn off the Media Library and use it only when you really, really want to use it. Oh, one last thing... don't forget that the Eject button on the remote is how they want you to turn off your drive. You should do that before unplugging it. I think that shuts down the drive without unplugging it. Don't think it solves the indexing time though.
42403
Yes, a device like this would cause a powered external drive to stay on as long as the USB hub is powered.
1813864
I only use the dock to do a backup from my laptop so I power it up when I begin and then turn it off at the end. I've never left it on long enough to see if the drives power down after a period of inactivity. Sorry I can't be of more help.
2140170
I've had mine now for about two years and have a 3TB Seagate External hard drive attached to it via the USB port. The 3TB model has an external power connection. Thus, it is not powered by the USB port. Having said that, I use mine for watching my movie collection that I have converted from VHS and DVD to mp4. I have had no issues accessing the drive nor using the Sony remote to scroll through files and find the content I want. A nice upgrade would be if the USB port were a USB 3.0 versus a USB 2.0, but as-is, it works fine for me.
1584964
There is an "Auto Power Off" option built in. You must be in "Optical" mode to turn it off. Even if off, if nothing is "flowing" through the device for a certain amount of minutes, it shuts off automatically. One other item . . . . if you are using HDMI IN and are trying to play something that uses DTS Surround Sound, it will shut off automatically - as if nothing is "flowing" through the device. This built in auto power off option should be deleted.
184226
hmmm good question...mine just keeps pluggin along. Since I got this used from some one who clearly could not get it going with the cryptic instructions...I got it for steal (price of the drives).
2173429
Yes. You can set this in the Tools>Power Management option of the configuration. It has specific options to power down the drives after 5/10/15/20/25/30 minutes, or 1-5 hours.
435050
I had a similar problem, but it was temporary. Someone had turned off the power to the outlet where my Sony RDPXF300iPN was connected.
2087378
Mine worked with power from HDMI port. I don't believe external power is required.
1958695
I'm not sure if it's the enclosure or the OS but on OS X the Put hard disks to sleep when possible option of the System Preferences Energy Saver does put the drives in this enclosure to sleep.
1962487
These are the latest version that WD makes :) I would suggest that you call Western Digital's support line... They are both very helpful and completely knowledgeable about their products...
189285
Mine came with a power brick, for what it's worth. I believe that this hub corrupted my external usb 3.0 hdd, and pretty much killed it. Don't know this for a fact but I don't use it anymore.
704570
I use a gamers PC to power Windows Media Center as my DVR. Since the processor lies on it's side and the air intake is then pointing up I just plugged in the USB Cable and simply laid them over the air intake. They did solve my problem of the Ceton 4 tuner card running a little hot.
1813863
Yes it does, though i think it's an HDD dependent issue and not related to the dock. I am using WD 5400rpm Green series , and energy saving features work like a charm, dunno about other drives, i think it shouldn't be an issue. Anyhow, the dock has gotten individual power and eject buttons for each of the drives in case u need manual control
1456557
It's not a problem to power an external HD on this USB port. DVD? Sorry, not sure about that. Never tried.
1278225
I can check later when I take it offline. Right now the green disk access light is flashing rapidly indicating a lot of disk activity. In other words, it is currently recording some TV via my Snapstream / Beyond TV recording software. I'll get back to this maybe next week. I do know that it is 7200 RPM.
735451
Are you using the proper power supply. I was cleaning rearranging my desktop, and inadvertently plugged the power supply from my modem into the laCie drive. It had enough power to turn the light on, but not enough to actually run the drive. I HAVE had a couple issues with my drive. The USB port now routinely disconnects for not apparent reason. Makes it difficult to copy large files.