External hard drive woes

[Jake Thingray]

Have been transferring files, mainly films and TV stuff that I've downloaded, from my knackered old laptop to an external hard drive. But, when I tried connecting said external hard drive to the USB port on my DVD player, it wouldn't play and the message 'Unsupported USB' came up; the same thing happened, with the same message, when I inserted a memory stick which had worked previously. Can anyone help?

[DJ Solid Snail]

Could it be a NTFS/FAT32 issue? Some devices prefer one format over the other. But if it worked before and you've not formatted it in the meantime, then it's likely not that.

[Jake Thingray]

Afraid I honestly don't know the difference between one format and another. For the record, prior to transferring stuff from my present laptop, the hard drive was previously used for stuff from another, now deceased laptop of mine: the suggestion has been made that the hard drive not working is due to the amount of stuff I download, some of which (due to being porn) may well have malware attached. Thanks anyway.

[NoSleep]

My DVD player's USB port only recognises FAT32 formatted drives and USB Memory sticks and cards. You need to format the drive and there should be options as to what formatting to use. Don't ask me to tell you how to do this unless you have a Mac; in which case you go into Disk Utility, select the drive you wish to format (not the partition), choose "Erase", choose "MS-DOS file system" and click "Erase".

[Jake Thingray]

My laptop isn't a Mac, but thank you in any case.

[derek stitt]

It may be something simple that needs doing. Firstly, place pen drive in USB slot in laptop. Then find my computer and double click that icon. Right click the drive number for the pen drive, e.g. removable disk g and then scroll down to format and press that .

On another note use your constant computer fuck ups as a reminder to stop knocking one out to those old nudie images of Paula Yates.

[NoSleep]

I'd experiment with a USB flash drive/memory stick first, to make sure. If the hard drive is already full and you don't have anywhere else to store the stuff on it while you format it (i.e. wipe it clean), the memory stick might be the way to go, as you can put stuff on that you want to view for an evening.

[derek stitt]

^this

[Jake Thingray]

Sorry to bump this, but still have basically the same problem, albeit with a new PC and a new USB memory stick. Have tried reformatting the memory stick, to FAT32(Default), NTFS and exFat, but on each occasion, when I've put it in the USB drive in my DVD player, it comes up as 'Unsupported USB Device'. Can anyone help, again, and is the problem with my DVD player?

[NoSleep]

I would have thought that FAT32 was the correct format. Are there any indications in the manual for the DVD player as to what is compatible? Is it just a standard (oldish) USB stick or a new-fangled high capacity one? I'd try the former over the latter to begin with.

[Jake Thingray]

Thanks for the reply, but I've no idea where the manual for the DVD player is. The USB stick is brand new, only bought it yesterday.

[NoSleep]

Look around for a free download of the dvd player's manual. Try the website of the manufacturer first of all. It might possibly be the USB stick is incompatible if it is new (I'm guessing that there have been recent enhancements to these as memory capacity has been considerably increased). Have you got an older one knocking around to try out?

[Jake Thingray]

The player's manufacturer, a cheapo brand of course, are Foehn and Hirsch, who don't seem to have a website. Have tried searching for a download of the instruction manual but no luck, have tried asking if anyone's got one on www.fixya.com, no replies so far. Using an old memory stick, one which I'd had the same bad luck with six months ago, reformatted it as FAT32, but on putting it in the DVD player, still got the fucking 'Unsupported USB' message. Thank you for your suggestions, anyway.

[syntaxerror]

Have you tried using a 'supported USB' hard drive?

[Jake Thingray]

Afraid I don't know where to get one from, Google's being no help.

[NoSleep]

The player's manufacturer, a cheapo brand of course, are Foehn and Hirsch, who don't seem to have a website. Have tried searching for a download of the instruction manual but no luck, have tried asking if anyone's got one on www.fixya.com, no replies so far. Using an old memory stick, one which I'd had the same bad luck with six months ago, reformatted it as FAT32, but on putting it in the DVD player, still got the fucking 'Unsupported USB' message. Thank you for your suggestions, anyway.

Same make DVD player as mine (cost something like £20 new), then, and I'm able to use both a couple of old FAT32 formatted USB sticks as well as an external hard drive formatted to FAT32 as well.

[Mike Upchat]

Foehn and Hirsch, .

Is the rebadged name for ebuyer products, (in other words the machine is made in China/Turkey probably in its thousands and then has a little badge stuck on depending on whether a consignment is going to ebuyer/Tesco/a.n.other wholesaler), the good news is that if you can find out any other names it trades under you have more chance if finding out if someone has had the same problem/solution. You'd need the exact model number which should be on the back but it is fairly common for the same basic own brand machine to be found trading under several different names which might help with finding a manual, a factory reset might help also (but you probably need the manual to tell you how to do that). AVForums is usually a good place for this kind of info. Best of luck.

[Uncle TechTip]

How much capacity on this unsupported stick? Could it be that the player can't read larger capacities? If it's larger than say 4GB it might be an issue. You could test this by making a really small partition. FAT32 should be good for many gig but who knows what's up with this implementation on the DVD player.

[NoSleep]

My Foehn & Hirsch DVD player is good for a 200GB FAT32 external hard drive, but I've never tried a USB stick beyond a 2GB one.

[Jake Thingray]

Honestly, thanks to everyone for the suggestions. The memory stick I bought a couple of days ago holds 8GB, so it may be too big, but the older one only holds 1GB, and it still shows up as unsupported. In desperation, am about to give the DVD player a wipe down and remove stuff from on top of it and under it, God knows if that'll make a difference.