bought a external hard drive but having problems

[holbrook99]

ok i have bought a wd 2tb external hard drive and have formatted(quick format) it to fat32 with a piece of software i downloaded. i have now filled it with files and last night i connected it to the ps3, and hey presto it works and i was happy as nothing EVER works that simple for me...

However i have got up this morning and the hard drive isnt being recognised by my ps3, the light on the hard drive is solid blue and last night it was going like knight rider. there is no icon on ps3 at all?? im really stuck now, ive turnt it off and on again and it still doesnt work.

Last night it was doing something similar, it was losing the hard drive icon on the ps3 after a while of not accessing it and i thought maybe the harddrive was just "sleeping" as when i pressed the power button a couple of times the icon popped back up again. But this morning there is nothing to make it work.

Please help as i have transferred LOTS of important files onto this.

Thanks
pAUL

[stu.artd]

Could be a fault with the HD or the enclosure itself. Have you tried hooking it upto your PC to check if that can access it reliably ?

[holbrook99]

its not being recognised by the pc faultlessley, i had turn power off and then on again to get it to racognise it, when ps3 does recognise it, it works faultlessly but then after a while the icon for it on ps3 vanisges, and i cant get it back?? the light on the front of the hard drive changes, when its working its like knightrider but when it isnt being recognised it is either solid blue, or intermittantly blue, every 3-5 seconds.

Earlier on it wasnt being recognised and i pressed the power button once and after a couple of seconds it started working??? once connected should the icon on ps3 be there 100% of the time???

NOTHING BLOODY WORKS FOR ME EVER!!!!!

[stu.artd]

Originally Posted by holbrook99

its not being recognised by the pc faultlessley, i had turn power off and then on again to get it to racognise it, when ps3 does recognise it, it works faultlessly but then after a while the icon for it on ps3 vanisges, and i cant get it back?? the light on the front of the hard drive changes, when its working its like knightrider but when it isnt being recognised it is either solid blue, or intermittantly blue, every 3-5 seconds.

Earlier on it wasnt being recognised and i pressed the power button once and after a couple of seconds it started working??? once connected should the icon on ps3 be there 100% of the time???

NOTHING BLOODY WORKS FOR ME EVER!!!!!

Once connected to the PS3 the icon for the external hard drive should be displayed all the time, at least that's how my USB drive and old 500GB external HD work.

Sounds to me like a power management function on the drive might be kicking in which might be something the PC can control if there's any software supplied with the drive, but you've got no way to resolve that on the PS3.

Of course as it's not working reliably with both the PC and PS3 then it couls also be faulty.

[holbrook99]

im getting problems whilst connected to the laptop now to....when i connected it, laptop was telling me the device has malfunctioned and i should replace it, so i decided to reformat it, but im gettings errors with formatfat32.exe software.

there must be something not right about it so should i ring amazon for a replacment or western digital directly?

[stu.artd]

Go with Amazon. They'll quickly send a new one and take the old one back. Dealing with WD will take longer and there's a chance they'll send a refurb' drive as the replacement.

[adskin80]

It does sound like a HDD fault, which is a shame WD are usually quite reliable ..... but it does happen. My 500gb and 1tb drives are fine and are the mybook one you have.

On another point, are you not able to stream from your PC to PS3, you will then be able to store files bigger than 4gb on your drive. Check out the streaming section for advice.

Good luck with the next HDD!

[holbrook99]

as one last try to make it work, im currently doing a "full format?" with fat32formatter?...i originally formatted it ticking the quick format box, and now im formatting it leaving that box blank...its been saying initialising data area now for approx 12 hours, is this normal? could it work? or am i wasting my time?

thanks paul

[stu.artd]

How did the reformat go ?

If you're still wanting to check it then have a look here and use the data lifeguard tool to check it.

[holbrook99]

i cancelled the full format as wasnt sure if it was doing anything or wether it was stuck?? anyway tried to do a full format in vista through command prompt, after reading a tutorial online, only for it to get to 100% after nearly 2 days and then say drive is too large to format

Ive done another quick format with fat32formatter, and its working kind of, the problem seems to be that the drive is going into "standby/sleep" mode when not being used, and i dont know how to "wake it up"