Not an uncommon issue, but the Bravia KD-49D8305 unable to recognise USB HDD?

[barrettn]

Files on the HDD are not corrupted as they can be read from a MAC and Windows. Disk is NTFS and files are AVI and MP4?

[hvalentim]

As many know by experience, USB Mass Storage support on Mediatek SOCs is plagued with bugs, including:

• the practical inability to use an usb device to extend internal memory (may seem to work for a short period, but sooner than later it will invariably mess up)
• a few device are mysteriously incompatible
• an awkward tendency to overheat and eventually "burn" connected devices (one USB stick and one hub as far as I am concerned).

You may have a hard time making Sony acknowledge anything, tough.

[Anonymous]

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@hvalentim wrote:

As many know by experience, USB Mass Storage support on Mediatek SOCs is plagued with bugs, including:

• the practical inability to use an usb device to extend internal memory (may seem to work for a short period, but sooner than later it will invariably mess up)
• a few device are mysteriously incompatible
• an awkward tendency to overheat and eventually "burn" connected devices (one USB stick and one hub as far as I am concerned).

You may have a hard time making Sony acknowledge anything, tough.

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Sony is well aware of these USB storage issues - getting any information on the current progress on resolution is all but impossible however..... 

@hvalentim - I am concerned of this overheating issue that you have claimed.  This is the first time (i think) that I am hearing this.  Are you able to provide more information.  As well as model numbers of devices and TV?  This is because I would like to escalate this to Sony.

Cheers

[Anonymous]

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@barrettn wrote:

Files on the HDD are not corrupted as they can be read from a MAC and Windows. Disk is NTFS and files are AVI and MP4?

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@barrettn

Is it the files that are not recognisable or the actual HDD?  Can you playback photos/music on the HDD?

[digitalsdm]

I have a different model (KDL-65W850C) but same issue, actually to be more specific, I only had this issue after updating the TV software to Android Marshmallow....

My various external HDD's (NTFS formatted) all media (MP4, AVI & MKV) played fine under Android Lollipop. But as soon as I updated to marshmallow, all the media apps (stock sony one, VLC & Arcos) couldn't recognise any media files?

I emailed Sony support, and their response was "do a hard reset" I did, but it did nothing to resolve the issue!

They then told me to "perform Factory reset" I did, but it did nothing to resolve the issue!

I then remembered that I had a similar problem when I upgraded my PS4 HDD, and after hunting around forums, someone mentioned that the HDD must be formatted with a 'MBR' partition Table for the PS4 to recognise it, so I reformmated it on my mac with said MBR partion table, and it worked.

So I thought I'd give that a go for the Media HDD's (which had GUID partition tables). And low and behold, immediately the TV recognises all media again! Only difference is I formatted to EXFAT this time.

So you may have to copy all media to a different drive, reformat with MBR partition and then copy all files back over, OR.... there's a great bit of software called 'Paragon Hard disk Manager' that allows you to modify the partition table without having to reformat the drive, meaning you can bypass the laborious and time consuming process of having to copy all files to it again!

I Should specify, I cannot guarantee this will work for your model, but worth a shot!

[Jecht_Sin]

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@Quinnicus wrote:

Sony is well aware of these USB storage issues - getting any information on the current progress on resolution is all but impossible however..... 

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If they want a sure shot (for debugging purposes) of something messing up after a while (if not immediately) you could suggest the developers to test the extended memory with a Lexar Jumpdrive P20 64GB (link). I had bought two of them, one specifically to extend the tv memory and it has been a nightmare since 6.0.1, with either pendrive (obviously working fantastically with my Mac and PS4).

I mean, they are the same USB pendrives of my first USB's bug report, but i wanted to make a remind in case they went stingy and didn't buy one of them.

Still what puzzles me the most is that the issue is at Linux kernel/operative system level (nothing to do with Android per se, to be clear). And on Linux the USB usually works fine. I do understand that each USB controller (Mediatek in this case..) is different, but it is the USB we are talking about!! It's a decades old technology!