Philips 5990 & ext. HD via USB

[Ruut]

Has anyone tried to connect a 1 TB FAT32 external drive to the USB-port of this player?
If that would work all my media could be stored on it for direct access to the TV.

Any experience anyone?
Thanks in advance for sharing your views on this!

[reg505]

I tried few months ago a Western Digital Passport 500 GB and it did not work, not enough power from the USB port. However, if the 1 TB disk you are talking about is self powered, chances are good that it is going to work. There is a limitation on the number of directories/files this player can access.

[Ruut]

Thanks reg505 for your reaction.
I did not (yet) purchase a HD: I'm investigating possibilities and your point regarding power supply is very welcome.
Yes, I am aware of max files / folders of the player, but that should not be a problem in my case.

[cal_tony]

I'm using a 2tb Fantom(self powered) drive without any problems. I also have a few 1tb drives(same brand) that I use without problems. Just make sure the drives are set up as Fat 32. The Fantoms, as well as most external drives, come as Fat 32. Just make sure your drive is Fat 32 before you start loading stuff on it. Otherwise you'll have to re-install everything all over again.

Tony

[Ruut]

1. Ah! Thanks Tony, so it really works OK! Did you make partitions or did the DVD player recognise the full disk?
2. Fantom drives aren't very popular in this country, but I guess WD or La Cie will do just as well.

Anyway, thanks very much!

[handyguy]

There are quite a lot of topics on this if you want to search but seems you already have it figured out. There is even custom firmware that gives you some better features.

[gll99]

Yes large powered drives work even better than un-powered thumb drives.You can go with a single partition or multiple if you like. Each partition will look like a drive to the player you just press the input selection button just as you would to cycle between the disc tray and the usb source (button below and to the left of play/pause). I used SwissKnife to partition my 1tb and 500gb drives to fat32. I also use mine with my ps3 and they work fine.

[Ruut]

Thank you all very much for sharing your experiences.
It's all clear now and I'm going to try it out.
Cheers!

[cal_tony]

Ruut,
The 2tb drive I'm using is in 2 equal partitions of 1 tb each, but I would assume the size makes no difference. One thing that does make a difference on large drives is whether or not they have an Esata connection. Copying a 5gb movie from your computer to your external drive using USB2 usually takes about 10 min or more. With Esata it would take 1/4th the time. When your loading 1 tb on a disk, that could be quite a bit of time. I use the Fantom drives mostly because the 1 tb with Esata are usually $100 or slightly less. My last 2tb was $ 150.

Tony

[Ruut]

Hi Tony,

Yes I realize that eSATA is much faster than USB. Most drives that are suitable do have this connection (as well as FW).
However most of my AVI's sit on DVD's right now and I guess that will be the limiting factor, when copying to the HD....

Cheers.

[Oosername]

I've just acquired a 1TB external 3.5", a FreeCom device, and intend to copy across about 600GB of content to it from three multi-partitioned 2.5" units. However, I'm certain that I'll fall foul of the 300 folder/648 files per folder restriction.
I'd prefer not to multi-partition this drive, so am looking to settle on an appropriate directory structure.
So, does the Philips DVP5990 treat each root directory folder entry the same as it would treat a separate logical drive?
or
does it limit you to 300 folders in total across the entire 1TB physical drive?


Also I'm keen to hear tips from others on how they've learned best to index/organise these large devices.


Oh ... and yuletide felicitations to all!!