2 months back I bought a new LG LCD TV (model 32LG80FR also called Jazz Series) to enjoy Movies at home. But the Movies were not limited to the movies broadcast on the Cable Network but few DivX videos which I already had it on my PC. This model was selected as it had USB support, a feature which was also present in my 3 year old LG Music System. The only difference was that my LCD TV USB support included DivX support in addition to MP3 & JPEG ( already supported by my Music System).Unfortunately my existing External USB Hard Disk (HDD) was running out of space, which I generally use to have my PC backup. My PC's HDD was also running out of space (20 + 40 = 60 GB). Rather than upgrading my PC's Internal HDD I planned to buy a large enough External USB HDD which would handle my Storage requirements for at least the next 6-7 years. I thus went for a 1 TB (1024 GB) Seagate FreeAgent Drive. This drive provided good aesthetics along with good technology. It went on good along with my TV, Set-Top Box & my Music System. It needs to be powered externally & the Power Adaptor has Universal Plugs provided.
I then plugged the FreeAgent Drive to my PC & copied few DivX's & MP3's. When I then plugged the FreeAgent Drive, my LCD TV popped up the message "DEVICE NOT SUPPORTED". I later realized that the FreeAgent Drive was formatted with NTFS File System by default & I was aware that all USB-enabled Systems currently only support FAT16 or FAT32 File Systems.
I thus partitioned the FreeAgent Drive into two partitions - 100 GB for my Music & Movies & 900 GB for my Data Backup. I now had a new problem - Windows Explorer did not allow the 100 GB to be formatted with FAT32 File System. I then googled & found that Windows Explorer would provide option to format a drive in FAT32 File System only upto a maximum of 32 GB else you need to use the Command Prompt & type "FORMAT
And then I copied all my DivX Movies & MP3's to my FreeAgent Drive. When I plugged it to my LCD TV, there was some more surprise waiting in store for me. Out of about 24 GB of DivX & MP3's, the LCD TV showed the entire directory structure but was unable to show all DivX & MP3 files. I then called an LG Technician who said that the LCD TV had USB support upto 8 GB. Since I needed a workaround I began my extensive R&D (which I always do :-). I tried all possible options - right from defragmenting to reducing Folder hierarchy.
After Copying/Deleting/Plugging/Unplugging my FreeAgent Drive numerous times to my PC, I came to the conclusion that the LCD TV worked best with smaller Folder Names & least Folder hierarchy. Though my conclusion might be wrong, I would suggest people using large External USB HDD's with their Systems to use only one level of Folder hierarchy. So just create Folders with the name of the Albums or Movie names under the root drive & copy your DivX & MP3's directly onto them.
I would eagerly wait for comments from people who have tried something different.
4 comments:
Thanks for a good article on this. I recently got this TV and was planning to add an external hard disk. Did you manage to have the LCD TV recognize more than 8 GB. I would require at least 20-30 GB for my movies.
@Simon - Its nice that you enjoyed the article. I tried lots of things but don't have the exact numbers to validate anything. Though the TV recognizes large disks, but beyond a certain limit (8GB or so) it does not recognize fragmented data & deep folder tree structures. The 8GB figure was given by an LG technician.
Hi, Thanks for the clarification.
i have a similar problem with a lg tv. sometimes it stops reading usb drives larger than 8GB. I have a 8GB corsair voyager that i have to format using HP's usb disk format tool, to make it readable by the tv. recently my 500 GB hdd started to be ignored by the tv, and its been 2 days already since i am working to fix it, but i constantly fail.
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