Smart Tv and External Hard Drive: compatibilities

[Rick17]

Hello, everyone.

I have a Samsung Smart TV, the model is UE32M5505A. I want to connect this TV to an external hard drive, not to record, but to play videos. The hard drives recommended by Samsung (I have already contacted them about this issue) are those which have a maximum of 2TB capacity and which have their own power adapter. The problem is that there are no external hard drives in the market with this requirements, because all those which have 2TB or less do not have a power adapter, and those which do have, are all above 2TB of capacity. Samsung could not help with this issue when I contacted them because of this paradox.

So, is there anyone here with the same problem? And is there anyone with suggestions or solutions to this issue?

Thank you.

[MJ69]

Is yours a UA40ES6200M ? My Toshiba DBT330  3TB won't even show up on mine and yeah tech reckons they only run 2tb hdd yet I would've thought the amps and volts (1a and 5v which is the same on both) would be the issue not disk size?

[Anne41]

Hi there 

I noticed that you were/are using a Lacie 2tb rugged hdd coupled to your tv and that this works fine. I was also planning to buy the LaCie rugged mini 2tb hdd to record and watch movies/series/ etc.. on my samsung tv. But i'm hesitating, as i'm not sure this will work...Could it be possible to tell me which tv model you have or maybe better, which usb port you are using? My tv is the samsung ue40ku6400 model and has 2 usb 2.0 ports, of which one is a 5v-1A one. Do you know if 1A is efficiënt for power supply? I thank you in advance for the information! Kind regards, Anne

[imbadri]

i have same problem. i tried to connect my 1tb hard drived to my samsung tv, its not able to read my hard drive. very disappointed.

[BBB4]

I dont know what its the problem. The thing is that some lcd.. The ones that are less expensive had less voltage in the usb.. Or is the proccesor.  In my expensive lcd from up to 1350us i used to play from a 1tb without power my movues without any problem. I bought a new Uhd and the same hard disk play but it freezes and had glitches in the movie.  I made some test with older tvs from 2015 but the 3d ones ( expensives) and they play perfectly. This 65 uhd do not play efficiently the movies. 

[mester778]

Hi All,

I have a QW49Q60RATXXH Saumsung TV, and I use a 4TB external HDD to play movies/series. It is basically working well, but usually it doesn't recognise correctly any type of videos, and after few times of copying and waiting, it recognises well the files. Could you please help me what can cause this issue?

Best regards

[wledwards]

Sir:  

Throwing 2 amps down a 22 or 24 guage solder coated stranded nylon "wire" for any extended period of time is definitely not recommened by anyone with an ounce of professional integrity.   Even if it were solid core wire, that thin of a guage, even at 5vdc, would produce undesireable heat in the wire itself.  We are talking USB 3.0 cabling not 20 guage solid strand twisted POE approved wire here.  Be smart...use an SSD.

[msdickerson]

I am also having issues using USB connected hard drives (WD 4tb and Seagate 7tb).   These drives have mostly mkv videos on them with a few older mpegs and avi videos.   None play on our QN75Q6DRAFXZA.   When I copy the EXACT same files to a USB Flash drive (32gb and 64gb NTFS format),   they all work fine.    So much for the CODECs?    Both hard drives show the directories and individual files without any issue, so its not that the TV does not recognize the NTFS format.   Anyone have any ideas whats up?   I can play the same movies through PLEX, but network issues can interupt the playing sometimes and I would prefer an attached hard drive. 

[NYC2020]

Those who can't get their tvs to read or even recognize an external drive, are y'all formatting the drives as ExFAT? Samsung and televisions in general run on Android-based middleware, and quite a few are fully Android TV-based operating systems. True, some tvs will negotiate with NTFS file systems on an external drive, but pairing an Android-friendly, ExFAT-formatted, external drive with a device such as a tv that can offer and Android handshake just makes sense. It will also simplify because ExFAT-formatted drives are friendly. Macs can read, write to, and repair ExFAT drives. So can PCs. Over the past five years, I've thrown all kinds file types onto my unpowered 1TB drive, a Touro Mobile USB 3, then plugged it directly into the USB port of UN50HU6950. The drive has always been managed with a Mac. Just be sure your drive is USB 3, not 2.