SOLVED - External HDD media not recognised after Marshmallow Update

[digitalsdm]

I have a Sony KDL-65W850C and after updating the TV software to Android Marshmallow, none of my external HDD's with my media files were recognised by any media playback apps. They all worked fine before the update?

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 at all?

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' (mac & windows) 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 with all models, but worth a shot!

Spread the word! Cause Sony support were about as useful as a chocolate teapot!!

[Jecht_Sin]

Yeah, true. I had to hit my head myself so many times on this, because I thought it was related to the USB module bugged. What it happens is that using the GUID partition table OS X/macOS actually makes two partitions: a small 200MB "EFI" partition in FAT (or FAT32. Not sure. about it) and then the main partition. I realised it only when putting the USB key into my PS4. It showed but it said that it was large 200MB only. So it came to my mind what the issue was since I had it already in the past.

[Anonymous]

HI @digitalsdm

Thanks for posting that solution (or potential solution).  Ive added this to my bookmarks for use at a later date!

Cheers

[digitalsdm]

Hi @Anonymous

No problem, and thanks for the kudos

Maybe the sony support suggested factory reset will fix the issue for some, but sadly not me

I assumed this a one of the (many) USB related bugs associated with the Marshmallow update....or perhaps not.

In the Marshamallow change log, I saw they added the ability to use external USB HDD's as additional storage for apps, etc.

So maybe this would explain the new requirement for a MBR partition table, as Sony devices seem to require this to write to drives, which the previous Android OS didn't support (apart from the dedicated HDD recording USB port for PVR functions)

Prior to marshmallow, the tv was only expecting to read as opposed to read/write.

Or maybe I'm reading to much into it, and it is indeed just a bug.

[christianoliff]

This worked for me - thanks for sharing!