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Thread: Guide to using W.D USB HDDs on Panasonic Plasma TVs

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    Member GavinSV's Avatar
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    Default Guide to using W.D USB HDDs on Panasonic Plasma TVs

    Well I've spent so long getting this to work, it'd be a crime not to share it round:

    I have a Panasonic 54'' Plasma (TH-P54v20A) and I bought a 500Gb WD MyPassport external drive with the intention of loading all my Movies onto it. However, anyone reading this thread probably already knows that USB hard drives do not work with Panasonic TV's like this. However after several beers I finally figured it out.

    Before starting you'll need a copy of Other Partition tools may do the job, but this is free and works quite well.

    1. Start EASEUS Partition Manager
    2. Select the USB HDD from the available drives list
    3. Delete the Partition - MyPassport drives are formatted for NTFS.
    4. Create a new partition - Be sure to set new partition to FAT32 and make it the primary partition.
    5. Format the new partition - Now here's the trick: set the cluster size to 32K. This is important because my Panasonic TV doesn't appear to like it when I set the cluster size to 64K
    6. Finished - Your WD passport drive should now work with your panasonic TV


    This proceedure has only been tested on a Panasonic TV with a W.D MyPassport HDD. - Hope someone else finds this useful.
    “There are 10 types of people in this world, those who understand binary – and those who don’t”

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    Sweet sounds like it might fix the same problem i had with my pano PVR

    thanks for the share
    When you do things right, people won't be sure that you have done anything at all

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    Default What type of movie files are they

    Can the panasonic play Avi etc please.
    Thanks Marty

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    Quote Originally Posted by marty 17 View Post
    Can the panasonic play Avi etc please.
    Thanks Marty
    Sure can...That was the whole point of the exercise. My HDD now has about 20 avi's. However, I have noticed a couple of avi's misbehave and do strange things. I suspect it's a codec issue.

    The video file browser in Viera Tools could be improved though. You only get a thumb nail view and it bastardizes the file names if they're too long.
    “There are 10 types of people in this world, those who understand binary – and those who don’t”

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    I assume that if the hdd requires fat32 then you will get the 4GB file size limit...a size often exceeded with HD movies.
    Thanks for the info though..I just purchased a TH-P50V20A so it should work on that one also.
    I run most of my movies through a WD HDTV media player with a WD passport HD attached and so far it plays everything I throw at it.

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    Quote Originally Posted by mandc View Post
    I assume that if the hdd requires fat32 then you will get the 4GB file size limit
    Hhmm, good point. Interesting though, Windows is still reporting the disk capacity as 500Gb and I already have of 40Gb of movies.
    “There are 10 types of people in this world, those who understand binary – and those who don’t”

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    Quote Originally Posted by GavinSV View Post
    Hhmm, good point. Interesting though, Windows is still reporting the disk capacity as 500Gb and I already have of 40Gb of movies.
    I think it is the size of each file on the HDD that is the limit..not the size of the HDD...some of my movies are 13GB mkv bluray rip files...on the 1080P setting on the plasma they look amazing
    Last edited by mandc; 23-04-11 at 04:07 PM.

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