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General discussion

HT-P38 & HDD setup

Aug 23, 2005 10:26AM PDT

I just purchased the Samsung HT-P38 system because it has USB support. My plan was to set up a USB-HDD loaded with MP3s and hook it to the HT-P38, so it would be a personal home theater jukebox. I format the HDD in FAT32, as the system won't recognize NTFS. However, when I hook it up to the HT-P38, all I get is "no file." Support @ Samsung sucks! Anyone encountered this problem, and have a solution?

Discussion is locked

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I'm having the same problem & have yet to find a solution
Aug 28, 2005 2:09PM PDT

I've tried THREE different USB hard drives - an Iomega 80gb formatted to NTFS, then to FAT32 and even FAT16 without luck. The hard drive is a USB 2.0 compliant drive that needs no additional drivers on Windows2k or XP and is "Mass Storage" compliant according to Iomega. Unfortunately the users manual is very vague and doesn't provide much help & their website is completely useless. I've also tried a Buslink USB hard drive as well as a generic USB enclosure & a Sandisk USB flash card reader without getting it to work.

I wish I had a solution for ya but I'm unfortunately in the same boat.

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I finally got it working!! :)
Aug 29, 2005 8:52AM PDT

Not sure if you're still following this thread - but since I found NO other information on the web about it perhaps someone else will find this usefull..

Today I borrowed one of those "generic" USB hard drive enclosures from work as well as a Western Digital 40gb 7200rpm drive. I formatted it to FAT32 (partition size was ~31gb - the largest FAT32 partition WindowsXP allows you to create) I copied a few MP3s onto it an guess what - IT WORKED!

I got curious if it was the enclosure itself, so I opened the other USB drives I'd tried and swapped out the drive (all of them were 80gb drives) When I put in the 40gb drive in any of the enclosures it works without problems. If you're using a LARGE usb hard drive you may consider replacing it with a smaller one.

Also, while the manual states that only Images & MP3's are accessible via USB - I found that if you rename DivX .AVI files to .JPG they play from the USB hard drive.. Wink Happy Happy

Hope this helps...

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Great tip on the DivX
Sep 5, 2005 5:23AM PDT

I finally figured it out too. I had used a 120G HD, but partitioned via FAT32 into 4 separate partitions. The HT-P38 was unable to read them. Once I eliminate all but one partition, the HT-P38 was able to read it. I had an old 100G HD that was fully formatted as FAT32, so I'm using that now. The only gripe I now have is that it can't order the collections alphabetically, only by the order that I copied onto the drive. I divide my collections into genre to make navigation a little easier -- rock, jazz, soundtracks, etc. Great tip on the DivX!!! Can't wait to try it. One more thing, I don't know how I was able to format a large drive with FAT32 - it was an old secondary HD that I put in my computer a long time ago. As you mentioned, we can only format 32G with FAT32. Does anyone know how to format an entire (large capacity) HD with FAT32?

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(NT) (NT) I found that the files play more cleanly if renamed as
Sep 9, 2005 1:02PM PDT
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Got cut off
Sep 9, 2005 1:04PM PDT

Anyhoo, I found that the DivX files played more cleanly if they were renamed as MP3s rather than JPGs

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How big a drive does it support?
Jun 30, 2006 3:19AM PDT

Taimaishutoo -- thanks so much for your info on the drive size.

I have a 200GB Western Digital drive in a USB enclosure. I tried formatting the first two partitions (32G each) in FAT32 and it still doesn't see my drive. Do I have any hope with this drive or do I need to get a smaller one for the HT-P38 to see it? Have you experimented to see what was the largest drive that it will recognize?

Also, have you had any luck with partitioned drives at all or does the entire HDD have to be one partition?