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googletv-issues - issue #154

USB Hard Disk causes GTV to crash


Posted on Mar 8, 2013 by Grumpy Ox

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I am a user, not a developer.

I try to connect an external USB hard drive (with its own power supply) to my SONY NSZ-GS7, it is recognized, and synced (I get 2 notifications).

A minute or so later, the GS7 freezes to a blue screen, and I have to reboot it.

If I leave the HD connected, the same sequence occurs - 2 notifications, followed a minute later by a freeze.

If I disconnect the HD, then reboot, the GS7 starts and runs normally.

This problem occurs with both of my Western Digital My Books - a 640 GB and a 1 TB.

I have re-formatted both drives to NTFS and FAT32, there is no difference in behaviour.

The problem does not happen with USB sticks up to 32 GB.

I installed the Smart RAM Booster app from the Play Store: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.rootuninstaller.ramboosterpro&feature=search_result#?t=W251bGwsMSwyLDEsImNvbS5yb290dW5pbnN0YWxsZXIucmFtYm9vc3RlcnBybyJd

This program displays the total RAM and the free RAM available on the Google TV as a pie chart. Of the 512 MB total, there is normally 200-300 MB free, and 30-40 processes running. When I connect the HD, I can see the free RAM rapidly drop to about 45 MB before the crash.

My story is told here with several helpful users attempting to solve my problem: http://www.googletvforum.org/forum/sonys-nsz-gs7/7402-usb-hd-causing-gtv-crash.html

And other users have reported the same problem with the Revue and the Co-Star:

http://www.googletvforum.org/forum/logitech-revue/4257-external-hard-drives-3-1-a.html

http://www.googletvforum.org/forum/vizio-co-star/7207-costar-keeps-crashing-after-hooking-up-wd-mybook.html

The common factor seems to be Western Digital, and the large (>500GB) size of the drives. Also, the problem appears to have started with the 3.1 release of Google TV.

This problem may not be widespread, but it is very frustrating for us who are affected.

I hope you can confirm and correct this problem in an upcoming release.

Thank you for your attention.

Comment #1

Posted on Mar 9, 2013 by Happy Rabbit

I would like to also voice my Google TV box problem where it crashes when connected to a USB Hard drive. This issue plagues the GS7 as well as two Logitech Revues that I own. It's a mirror situation of the user above.

I've tried close to 20 different hard drives; some portable, some desktop. For the record, I've connected both USB ports to power the portable hard drives. The manufacturers vary from Western Digital to Seagate to Hitachi. The storage space is from 320GB to 3TB's. The format has been tried as both FAT32 and NTFS and they all have experienced the same symptoms. I'm using the USB ports to connect the GS7 and Revue to a USB hard drive for watching movies. If I format a drive from scratch, fill it up with MP4,AVI and MKV movies and plug it into the GS7 or Revue, it will successfully read the drive. I'll let it categorize the media for a while, come back and after that try to play something. Initially, I can watch something for up to 30 minutes. Then, the screen will flash a few times, then freeze, either doing an automatic reboot or requiring a manual reboot on my part leaving only the GoogleTV picture frozen in the background. The second time I try to connect to the same drive, it will only last a few minutes before it then crashes and I have to unplug it, reboot the box and try it all over again.

All USB flash drives work fine whether its through the Sony media player or the GoogleTV app VIMU player. The only hard drive that has ever worked with GoogleTV was on the Revue and that was an older firmware version using a 160GB ATA desktop drive formatted to FAT32.

Every hard drive that fails to work with the GS7 and the Logitech Revue plays all my media perfectly fine on a WDTV Live.

It basically makes Google TV unusable with hard drive media. When I say I've now tested it with close to 20 hard drives, I'm not exaggerating. There is a problem with GoogleTV and hard drive media, so I'd appreciate if your engineering team could look into this and hopefully provide us with a future firmware fix that can solve this issue.

Thank You

Comment #2

Posted on Aug 4, 2013 by Happy Horse

I use a USB flash drive that has the same problem. I formatted it as NTFS, and it worked for several weeks until one day my Logitech Revue became unstable. Removing the flash drive fixed the problem. This is the second time this has happened with the same 64MG flash drive. Mounting the drive on a Windows 7 laptop works fine.

Comment #3

Posted on Jan 5, 2014 by Quick Lion

was there any fixes to this?

Comment #4

Posted on Jan 6, 2014 by Grumpy Ox

Yes, this was fixed in a subsequent release of SONY firmware.

Comment #5

Posted on Jan 7, 2014 by Quick Lion

is there anywhere i can go to find out how to go back to that firmware?

Status: New

Labels:
Type-Defect