On Mac: Find your external hard drive in Utilities. Click on the drive icon, and you'll see its info at the bottom of the window. If the file system of your external hard drive is not compatible with your TV, files cannot be read at all. So reformat it accordingly. How to format an external hard drive for TV on Windows?
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- Dec 03, 2020 After knowing the proper Samsung Smart TV external hard drive format, now it’s time to format the external hard drive to the compatible file system. Basically, you can finish this formatting task in Disk Management, DiskPart or File Explorer.
- You can use an external HDD as a TV hard drive recorder as long as you can access a smart TV with a USB port to connect the devices. Even though USB flash drives of 8GB to 264GB can also be used for the purpose, their limited storage space might be a hassle sometimes.
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.
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. Computer storage drive. However, this very same partitioning format may not be recognised by your TV. Adobe premiere pro movies. It's one of those things that's very dependent on the brand and model involved.
![Drive Drive](https://icdn4.digitaltrends.com/image/samsung-t5-ssd-review-scale-720x720.jpg)
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.
Adobe film editing.
Adobe film editing.
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.
Format External Hard Drive For Mac
[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.
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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While most external hard drives are already designed to work for Windows computers, there are times when you need to reformat one. You might want a drive that works with Macs and PCs, or maybe you want to partition it, which will split it up into two different formats. Here’s how to format an external hard drive for Windows 10 or partition it.
How to Format a Hard Drive for Windows 10
Note: Formatting your drive will erase all the existing files on it. So if your external hard drive already has important files on it, make sure to back them up before proceeding.
- Connect your external hard drive to a Windows computer. If your external hard drive is working, your computer will automatically detect it, and the drive will appear under Devices and Drives next to your internal drives in the This PC window. You can also find it in the left sidebar of File Explorer.Note: If you already used your external hard drive on a PC, be sure to back up any files on it. Formatting your drive will wipe out all the data in it.
- Right-click on the external hard drive and click Format.
- Choose a format under File System. By default, Windows computers will choose NTFS (New Technology File System) for you because that’s the native Microsoft filing system. But if you want the external hard drive to also work on a Mac, you should choose exFAT.Note: The exFAT file system only works on Mac 10.6.5 or later, and Windows XP SP3 or later.
- Check the Quick Format box, and click Start. Depending on the size of the drive, and if there are files to be deleted in it, this can take a few to several minutes to finish.
- Click OK when the Format Complete pop-up screen appears.
Now you have a hard drive formatted for Windows, but what if you wanted to use it with Mac computers also? One easy way to have a hard drive that works with Mac and Windows is by partitioning it. This means you’re splitting the drive into two formats, one for Mac and one for PC. Here’s how to do that:
How to Partition an External Drivein Windows 10
- Open the Windows search box, type “diskmgmt.msc,” and hit enter. The Windows Search Box is the magnifying button icon in the bottom-left corner of your screen.
- Right-click on your external hard drive and select Shrink Volume. If this option is not available to you, reformat the drive to NTFS and try again.
- Enter an amount of space that you want to shrink your volume by. The remaining space will be displayed in megabytes.
- Then click Shrink. This will split the hard drive, with one part becoming unallocated space.
- Right-click the unallocated space on your drive and select New Simple Volume.
- Click Next.
- Then indicate how big you want the partition to be. If you want to use the rest of the space, enter the maximum disk space indicated above it. Then click Next.
- Next, choose what drive letter you want to use. Letters that have already been assigned to other drives will not be on this list, so don’t worry if there are missing letters. Just choose among the drive letters still available.
- Go to File System and choose a format. Windows will choose NTFS for you because that’s Microsoft’s native filing system. But if you want the external hard drive to also work on a Mac, you should choose exFAT, which is an upgraded version of FAT32.Note: The exFAT file system only works on Mac 10.6.5 or later, and Windows XP SP3 or later.
- Check the Quick Format box, and click Next.
- Finally, click Finish. If a pop-up appears telling you to format the disk, click Format Disk. After that, the newly formatted disk will open automatically.
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Partitioning your external hard drive will enable you to perform tasks in one section without affecting the rest of the drive. If you want to know how to format a hard drive for Mac, check out our previous article here.