Externar Hard Disks (NTFS) and compatibility(fixed by v1.0.22)

Dear Sirs,

Just yesterday I received my Zidoo X6 Pro media player and the first thing I did in order to check it out, was to connect my 2 x 1TB 2,5'' external hard disks (with movies and music, NTFS based) to the USB ports in the side of the player. A window popped-up asking me to OPEN the detected device, which I chose, but nothing happened. When I enter either your own EXPLORER, or the Kodi interface, I can see only the FLASH, SMB or NFS choices as available devices. I tried with a 64GB USB stick as well, but to no avail.

I also checked the various threads around here and it is really not obvious what is the situation regarding NTFS hard disks and if Zidoo X6 Pro supports them or not, since some had the same bad experience like me, while others stated that their hard disk was found.

Still, for such a high-tech media player I find it unacceptable if some external hard disks are not supported and I would like you to inform me if I should throw away the player and acquire another one for such usage or you intend to upgrade your player by an updated firmaware that will resolve all these issues that should not have been there in the first place. I know that I'm not alone in this, since many others have also posted claims of such problems with non recognizable NTFS hard disks.

In the meantime and till I get a specific answer/solution I will not recommend Zidoo X6 Pro to anyone out there, with the same needs.

Thank you a priori!

 

did you informed Zidoo of your hard drive brand ?

I plug my seagate 2,5 1TB and works fine.

 

I noticed from another of your posts that it worked flawlessly in your case. Unfortunately my own experience is different.

I have already tried a Toshiba Canvio Basics (model DTB310) 1TB and a 64GB Kingston DataTraveler Ultimate 3.0 G3 and none was recognized (I will revert for the second 1TB hard disk). Actually that's not true...when connected, a pop-up window appeared, I chose OPEN and nothing happened.

That is why I started this thread, to inform Zidoo about such problems and it seems that I'm not alone in this. My previous media player, a 5 years old E-Great, never had any problem recognizing whichever hard disk I threw at it. It's unacceptable having such a media player recognizing, let's say, only Seagate hard disks. There shouldn't be such incompatibilities.

 

The new users on Android need to understand that this new generstion of chips android-based are not dedicated media players chips, but tablets.

How many tablets Android accept 1Tb hard drives ?

Its importante to report the exact hard drive model number, so the zidoo can be aware and update for more compability...

 

My dear friend, if there are such limitations every company that produces android based media players should be obliged to state it clearly in the first place. The only thing that Zidoo states regarding the USB port is the following "2 * USB 2.0 port(one could be a OTG port)", and while for the SD card reader mentions all the compatible sizes, for the USB there's no such claim at all, allowing everyone to believe that there are no limitations whatsoever.

I'm not illogical or irrational here. We are dealing with media players, Android based or not, and it's normal for the casual user to expect to be able to connect his/her external NTFS (the most typical format nowadays) hard disk through USB and play without any hassle or problem. If that's not the case, the potential buyer should be warned beforehand or get frustrated, like in my case, for having bought a player that does not allow him to play movies from his external drive, unless they are formatted either in FAT32 (which, as you know, is totally useless for the vast majority of high definition movies since they exceed 4GB) or exFAT.

I have already mentioned the devices that do not work at all with the player. The second 1TB drive is a Seagate ST1000LM024, but honestly there's no point in mentioning the rest 4-5 models of external hard disks I utilize, because I do not think that it's an issue that is company or model based. I do not understand how or why your own Seagate works, while mine won't. If it's an issue with Android, then your own hard disk shouldn't work either.

I do wait for the company to revert with explanations and remarks regarding this case. There are many potential buyers out there who share the same mentality like me when it comes to media players and they are not responsible for knowing the limitations or lack of features, for something so obvious and typical, if the company does not state them clearly.

After all, this is not a tablet and is not advertised as one, but as a media player that even though is based on Android, it should be able to offer essential feature, otherwise it's mostly useless to me.

Btw...the player did come with the latest 1.0.19 Firmware, while the 1.0.21 does not mention anything at all regarding an update on this issue.

 

1 day later and still no response from the company through here. Is the forum just for opinion sharing between users? Any moderator/admin that would like to comment on the above?

 

I don't know how to answer your question.We tested eight ST hardware disk yesterday, 1T,2T,500G, NTFS,FAT32,EXFAT Format.but no any problem. so nothing to update.
Had a bug in explorer at v1.0.15,It cant find some mount device.but V1.0.16 fixed it.KODI never had this problem.
Can you try a Udisk?Let's step by step.find the problem on your X6.
First to rule out the problem of individual differences in hardware.

 

Hi:
It sorry for that.
First, X6 support NTFS. it pop up the "open device",so the Hard disk is recognized.
we have a bug in v0.15 explorer,if it can't find the disk,you can close the explorer,then open the explorer again. Otherwise, we release v0.16 firmware to fix it.
The kodi have not this problem, can you find your disk in kodi?

 

First of all, thank you for taking the trouble to respond and assist. Regarding your suggestions:

The Zidoo X6 Pro I acquired has already installed the firmware 1.0.19 and I can not fall back to 1.0.16 (there's no reason anyway), which means that it should have already corrected the bug.

Now, as I mentioned initially, I have not tried just one external 2.5'' (USB powered), but two different models (mentioned above) and one 64GB USB stick, which means that we are not talking about a faulty or problematic hard disk alone. I intend to experiment with 2-3 other models as well, since I have plenty external hard disks to try out.

In order to provide you as much information as possible, when I first inserted the hard disk into the USB slot, there was no pop up window at all. I connected though the media player to the WIFI router, rebooted with the hard disk connected already and when the media player opened again, I disconnected and connected again the hard disk (and the second one in the other slot). The pop up windows did appear, asking me to OPEN or CLOSE the hard disk, I clicked OPEN and nothing happened. I also went to the Device List mentioned above and there were only the FLASH, SMS and NFS choices, no USB at all (no green lit either). That happened with all the above three external devices above 16GB I used.

I also tried a Kingston USB stick 4GB (FAT32) and it worked flawlessly, recognizing the device, appearing in the Device List and with the USB lit green as it should.

I honestly do not know what to do and if the specific Ziddo X6 Pro model I was sent is problematic and should be changed or not.

I wait for your further comments. It does seem that I'm not the only one with this problem, according to other threads.

Edit: I forgot to mention that not even KODI recognizes any of the devices, when I choose Browse (through Source) and External Devices. None hard disk is included there.

 

Hi:
First, thanks for your detailed report.
Can not pop up the window; may be the the power adapter can not enought for your hard disk, zidoo X6 is 5V/2A. Can you connect a extern power for your hard disk?
When pop up window, you can not see the hard disk, can you close the "explorer"(not press home key, press the back key,and again press back key), then into the "explorer",to see the hard disk or not?
Waiting for your reply.

 

Hi Spring,

There's no possibility to connect an external power for the hard disks, since they are typical 2.5'' models, powered by the USB alone. Still, as I mentioned, the pop-up window didn't appear just the first time. Since then, every time I connect them, it pops up normally, asking me what to do with the newly connected device and even though I choose OPEN, I end up in the contents of the FLASH device.

I will try to press twice the back key and check again the hard disk through the device list, when I get back this afternoon home, but I'm really not that optimistic. It should open the disks and see their contents, as long as the pop-up windows appears and choose OPEN, right?

I really don't understand why this doesn't happen at all!

 

Hi:
We are sorry this thing bothered you. we will release a new firmware this day. We will try our best to fix this bug in this firmware.

 

Thank you Sping for the assistance and the after sales service. I hope that this new firmware will resolve this kind of issues and I won't have to bother you again.

Fingers crossed!

 

can you check for me?
into setting==>Storage==>USB storage
can you see the mount device and the total space?

 

I can not do that right away, since I'm at my office, but I will certainly do that when I get back home. From memory though, because I did try everything before opening this thread, I remember that there was option to mount USB 1 and I did to no avail though. But I will get back with another try later on and inform you accordingly.

 

ok,thank you very much.

 

Ok. I tried all my 6 external hard disks which vary from 510MB to 2TB (all NTFS formatted). The only one that was recognized was the folowing one:



In order to show how peculiar is the whole thing, the following 1TB Toshiba hard disk, that is newer than the one above (acquired about a month ago) was not recognized at all (the pop-up windows did not appear):




The first hard disk which works, has the following characteristics (hope they are helpful)

General Information
Drive Controller: Serial ATA 3Gb/s @ 3Gb/s <-> USB
Drive Model: TOSHIBA MQ01ABD100
Drive Revision: AX001U
Drive Serial Number: 72F4FETJS
World Wide Name: 500039426904E43
Drive Capacity: 953,869 MBytes (1000 GB)
Media Rotation Rate: 5400 RPM
Nominal Form Factor: 2.5"

Drive Geometry
Number of Cylinders: 16383
Number of Heads: 16
Sectors Per Track: 63
Number of Sectors: 16514064
Total 32-bit LBA Sectors: 268435455
Total 48-bit LBA Sectors: 1953525168
Cache Buffer Size: 8192 KBytes

Transfer Modes
Sectors Per Interrupt: Total: 16, Active: 16
Max. PIO Transfer Mode: 4
Multiword DMA Mode: Total: 2, Active: -
Singleword DMA Mode: Total: 2, Active: -
Ultra-DMA Mode: Total: 5 (ATA-100), Active: 4 (Ultra-DMA/66)
Max. Multiword DMA Transfer Rate: 16.7 MBytes/s
Max. PIO with IORDY Transfer Rate: 16.7 MBytes/s
Max. PIO w/o IORDY Transfer Rate: 16.7 MBytes/s
Transfer Width: 16-bit
Native Command Queuing: Supported, Max. Depth: 32
TRIM Command: Not Supported

While the second one (which is not recognized at all) has the following:

General Information
Drive Controller: Serial ATA 3Gb/s @ 3Gb/s <-> USB
Drive Model: TOSHIBA MQ01UBD100
Drive Revision: AX101U
Drive Serial Number: 25GET8S2T
World Wide Name: 0000
Drive Capacity: 953,869 MBytes (1000 GB)
Media Rotation Rate: 5400 RPM
Nominal Form Factor: 2.5"

Drive Geometry
Number of Cylinders: 16383
Number of Heads: 16
Sectors Per Track: 63
Number of Sectors: 16514064
Total 32-bit LBA Sectors: 268435455
Total 48-bit LBA Sectors: 1953525168
Cache Buffer Size: 8192 KBytes

Transfer Modes
Sectors Per Interrupt: Total: 16, Active: 16
Max. PIO Transfer Mode: 4
Multiword DMA Mode: Total: 2, Active: -
Singleword DMA Mode: Total: 2, Active: -
Ultra-DMA Mode: Total: 5 (ATA-100), Active: 5 (ATA-100)
Max. Multiword DMA Transfer Rate: 16.7 MBytes/s
Max. PIO with IORDY Transfer Rate: 16.7 MBytes/s
Max. PIO w/o IORDY Transfer Rate: 16.7 MBytes/s
Transfer Width: 16-bit
Native Command Queuing: Supported, Max. Depth: 32
TRIM Command: Not Supported

With the exception of one other hard disk which was recognized, but presented empty (check the following image) on the Settings/Storage, all the other ones were not recognized at all (no pop-up window):



Every other attempt to have Zidoo X6 Pro recognize the rest of the 4 hard disks or the 64GB USB stick of Kingston was pointless, even though I exited Explorer and opened it again. No choice to Mount the specific USB slot either. No pop-up window.

Bear in mind that all the hard disks are recognized by my last media player, a 5 years old E-Great 34B.

If you believe that it's important to mention the rest of the hard disks' technical details, I'll be happy to do so. Hope the above helps you to find the reasons behind such issues and resolve them the soonest. As it stands I can only utilize one out of six hard disks and I honestly can not tell for sure if the next one I intend to buy will be compatible and recognizable.

 

I also received a day ago 4 November my Zidoo X6 Pro media player and the first thing I did was to check whether my 1TB 2.5 '' External Hard Drive Verbatim brand Model 53 023 usb3 (with movies and music, NTFS-based ) would be recognized by the Zidoo on the USB ports in the side of the player. A window popped up asking me to the detected device, I chose teopen, but nothing happened. If I either your own EXPLORER or Kodi interface, I can only FLASH, SMB, NFS or SD card choices to see available devices. I also tried it with three other external hard drives but with two usb2, but to no avail.
Who can help me solve this problem. I find it incredible that such an expensive device simply not recognize the external hard disk drives and can access

 

It's a pity that another one faces similar problems, but it comes to show that this is not just one man's problem after all, but it occurs more frequently than initially thought.

Did the above technical details helped you to find out what is the reason behind such behavior? Can I contribute any other way, so that we manage to resolve these issues?