Samsung forum: Connecting External USB HDD for recording TV and timeshiftin

I have the Samsung LE40C750 3D LCD TV. I connected a WD MyBook 500GB 3.5" USB drive. It is currently FAT formatted, and plays MKVs and photos just fine. I get the same error when trying to format from the TV. The TV was recently firmware upgraded from the internet, but I don't know if it would have worked before this.

The TV was bought in Denmark (Northern Europe), if it matters.

From what I understand this should 'just work'. Are we missing something?

No, that didn't work although in Windows 7 the drive does not appear as 'unformatted' but as 'unallocated'. After connecting to TV, the drive failed to format but was recognised by the PC as FAT32 formatted. The TV saw it as VFAT. I am totally confused!

WIN7 is bad at formatting drives. You need something like "PARAGON disk manager" or Norton Partition Magic utility to actually perform low level format and clearing all unnrelevant windows file system info. I believe that WIN 7 format just leaves some extra info on hard disk - that's it.

After spending days searching the internet, forums and contacting Samsung , Western digital and a large Pc store.
this is what I found out with the help of a few chance remarks from the above the tv usb ports are 500ma max power, (which is a usb standard for all usb ports) which is why a old laptop hard disk refitted into external case would not work it just clicked power for this disk needed 1.5 amps. now trying to find out the max power used is surprising hard even looking on manufactures web sites hence the call to western digital who recomended I try Wd elements SE usb portable hard drive as it is made for tv's max current 500 m/a the 2.5 inch not 3.5 it just has a short usb cable nothing else, but a usb extension cable works ok if it not long enough.

now to get it to work if you want to used the tv media player recorded tv and time shift, plus videos music and films.
the disk comes ready formatted but you need 2 partitions I bought the 1TB as it was only £10 more than the 500gb.
NOTE if you only have I partition then all you can do is time record tv as there is now way to add films music or photos
free partitioning software links
(EaseUS® Partition Master 8.0.1 Home Edition free from http://www.partition-tool.com/personal.htm or acronis free from Western digital web site but you have to have a wd disk or it wont work)

The first partition is for time recording and time shift
on the second partition create 3 directories video music photos this is ntfs partition which you can read on your pc add delete music films (videos) and photos.
Now when you plug it into the tv let the tv format and test the drive it will never ever work unless you do that which is the first partition by default why because it formats as a samsung modified unix partition,
you will never see this partition on a PC in fact the pc will say drive needs formating.thats why you need 2 partitions
the test checks read and write speeds and says ok or fail.
for just photos videos and music my external ntfs formatted iomega with seperate psu works fine, not tested on recorded tv as I had other info on first partiton
I would presume this would work for most Samsung models that have the recording tv facility.

ps I tried a usb pen drive formatted ok passed read test failed write test, not fast enough.

Hope this helps as my first post on Cnet

I dont think you can use 2 hard drives because the tv only has 1 usb port marked HDD the other is for usb pen drives , and the TV will not support a usb hub according to samsung, so I dont see how you would connect them unless you keep swopping them over depending whether you want to record tv or watch videos/pictures/ music.
The hard disk I am using is a Western Digital 2.5" WD elements SE 1TB model No.WDBABV0010BBK-EESN and only draws 500m/a is very neat and small 4.5 " x 3" with just a usb cable coming out for power and data and just sits inside my TV stand never have to touch it or switch it ON/off as the tv controls it.
Why this works is because it only draws 500ma I was not able to find any other makes at the time with that low a current.
powered hard drives get their power from the external power supply and wont exceed the 500m/a max from the usb port, if you read my original you will see I also tried my external omega 3.5" drive which worked on video/music/pictures but did try it I recorded TV as I did not want to format it.
1TB wil hold 76 hours of films according to the WD web site
I did not have a formatting problem as the drive came with it already formatted ntfs which the TV accepts and reformats to samsung format so if people are having a problem first reformat the drive to NTFS on a PC
then let the TV format it, I am only guessing that the TV can't handle a un-partitioned or unformatted hard disk.
Hope this helps

Hi,
My aim was to just use one HDD for TV recording and video/music/pictures,I dont have a blu-ray player so cant comment.
I think the usb pen drive is probable not the best option as you will find it extremley hard to find a pen drive to give you a sustained 34mb/sec Write speed if one even exists and why settle for a capacity of 16-32 gb plus the samsung manual states this speed is not the same as a PC reports so to me seems a useless spec. anyway.
I wanted like you to use a old hard disk and pen drive so bite the bullet and buy the hard disk about £60
against what you paid for the TV its nothing.
Why they said portable for as far as I know is that is the only way you will get a low current drive, its minium 5400 speed by the way.
My signal is via aerial/ freeview
There are 2 ways to record TV from EPG, good for when you are not at home or on holiday ,it then displays the name of the program for playback, that may be the reason it will only work from aerial signal so try it on aerial first then experiment
or press the record button which is good when phone rings it will record to the end of the program or you can change the recording time,
Bear in mind you can only watch what you are recording or switch tv to standby and watch it later, which for me is a big dissappointment as initally I thought I could watch 1 channel ard record another.
the spec. for the drive I think I found on the WD site but not easy its in a pdf doc on drive specs.

I hope this helps you

ps if you found my post helpful please tick the box
Thanks