Lost, Confused and Don't know What to Do after my upgrade to Dell XPS 8900

[Davem88]

I am totally baffled with something that happened after I started using my new PC. XPS 8900.

I've been using my WD Live media player and now KDLINKS HD720 connecting two WD MyBook 4TB and 128gb flash drive. The hard drives were always iffy and I hated to disconnect them from the TV and then to my old PC because it would sometimes take too much time for WD Player to reconnect the 4TB drives back to the player, however, at the end, it all worked.

Now, my huge problem...

I got myself a new Dell XPS 8900.

As soon as I connected my WD 4TB drive (via USB) to the new computer and added a few movies, this drive could never be found by the WD player or the 2nd player I bought recently. It just doesn't see it.

I thought that maybe it was only this particular 4TB drive. So, I took my second one and also connected it to my XPS8900. Then disconnected and connected back to the WD Player ... and ... gone. That thing does not see the external HD.

WHY????

Note, my 128gb USB 3.0 is functions just right. No issues after using the new computer. Also, my other 32gb flash drive also works just fine. One similarity that happens for both 128gb and 32gb drives is that this XPS8900 shows me that these 2 drives have errors and need fixing. I reject because I remember that once I did that, this drive stopped working on my WD Media player.

So ... seems like, when my XPS8900 "thinks" that USB/drives have errors, that means it will work just fine on the media player.

Could this new PC added some registry files to the 4TB drives? Is the problem that my old PC was Windows 7 and this one is Windows 10?

I really need these two 4TB drives to be usable on the media player.

Any help would be very appreciated.
Thank you.

 

[UsandThem]

Are you plugging the WD 4tb drives to the back USB ports or the front?

If plugging them on the back, have you tried both USB 2.0 and USB 3.0 ports?

Since you did a clean install of Windows 10 the other day, did you make sure the proper drivers were installed from Dell's website?

I know sometimes my front USB ports don't provide enough power for some external drives, and it causes issues. Are your 4tb drives externally powered?

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Edit: I just remembered you were having issues with other external USB drives when it was running Dell's factory image.

Maybe your computer does have hardware issues. I would recommend contacting Dell support. Maybe you can install their programs and they can remote connect to your PC.

 

[AnonymouseUser]

Sounds like it doesn't support 4TB external drives. Try this driver and see if it helps. If that doesn't help then see if anything else here might help.

 

[Davem88]

Sounds like it doesn't support 4TB external drives. Try this driver and see if it helps. If that doesn't help then see if anything else here might help.

Are you plugging the WD 4tb drives to the back USB ports or the front?

If plugging them on the back, have you tried both USB 2.0 and USB 3.0 ports?

Since you did a clean install of Windows 10 the other day, did you make sure the proper drivers were installed from Dell's website?

I know sometimes my front USB ports don't provide enough power for some external drives, and it causes issues. Are your 4tb drives externally powered?

------------------------------

Edit: I just remembered you were having issues with other external USB drives when it was running Dell's factory image.

Maybe your computer does have hardware issues. I would recommend contacting Dell support. Maybe you can install their programs and they can remote connect to your PC.

Maybe my post was a bit confusing. My PC is reading all drives ... problem is with my WD Media player and Kdlinks media player that is connected to my TV. Those 4TB hard drives when connected to the media players are not found by the player.

By the way ... how important is it to update all the drivers? Should I do the 40 min check or just go and download all possible drivers for my PC?
for example ... Dell XPS 8900 System BIOS or Dell Foundation Services Application which Dell site marks as urgent

 

[AnonymouseUser]

Maybe my post was a bit confusing. My PC is reading all drives ... problem is with my WD Media player and Kdlinks media player that is connected to my TV. Those 4TB hard drives when connected to the media players are not found by the player.

By the way ... how important is it to update all the drivers? Should I do the 40 min check or just go and download all possible drivers for my PC?
for example ... Dell XPS 8900 System BIOS or Dell Foundation Services Application which Dell site marks as urgent

Yes, I got it, and to me it sounds like the Dell messed something up on the drive while writing to it. If you have another PC you should run checkdisk on the external drives, then install the driver on the Dell before you plug the drive back into it. The BIOS update may help as well, just be sure you follow the instructions carefully.

 

[UsandThem]

Maybe my post was a bit confusing. My PC is reading all drives ... problem is with my WD Media player and Kdlinks media player that is connected to my TV. Those 4TB hard drives when connected to the media players are not found by the player.

By the way ... how important is it to update all the drivers? Should I do the 40 min check or just go and download all possible drivers for my PC?
for example ... Dell XPS 8900 System BIOS or Dell Foundation Services Application which Dell site marks as urgent

Gotcha. Not sure about the media player. Depending how old it is, maybe it doesn't support drives over a certain size. Just a guess on that.

As far as the Dell drivers, I would install all that are listed as critical for sure. As far as the chipset drivers, sound drivers, and AHCI driver, etc, Windows 10 will often load old generic drivers that allow your system to work. For example, usually you will have a 2006 generic AHCI driver installed instead of a specific chipset driver.

The Dell drivers will be more specific to your actual motherboard, and should be installed.

You could install the drivers that are newer than the ones Windows installed by comparing the driver version in your device manager. (time consuming)

You could run that Dell program and just download and install all the recommended drivers. It might prompt you if you already have a newer version installed and ask if you are you sure. If that happens, you can probably just keep the newer driver.

 

[Davem88]

well, now, connetcing my 4tb External HD to my Laptop running Windows 7, it found some errors and I am doing both 1) Automatically fixing file system errors as well as 2) Scanning and attempting to recover bad sectors.

Looks like it's going to take 5 hours for this process to end. Have no idea if it will help.

My other choice would be to use my 2 4TB drives connected to PC and just transfer to USB flash drives whatever I want to watch. Kind of a pain in the butt.

Maybe there is some sort of network capability for Kdlinks media player? That way it can read from my PC??? I was able to somehow get my PC to read from the Kdlinks media player but not vise versa.

 

[AnonymouseUser]

Can you install the Plex Media Player app on the Kdlinks 720? If so, install the Plex Media Server on the Dell and add your media folders. The Plex Media Player app on the Kdlinks 720 will find the Plex Media Server automatically and share files that way. You can leave the external drive plugged into the Dell permanently if you wish to use that for your media files, or just use internal storage for the media files.

 

[Davem88]

Can you install the Plex Media Player app on the Kdlinks 720? If so, install the Plex Media Server on the Dell and add your media folders. The Plex Media Player app on the Kdlinks 720 will find the Plex Media Server automatically and share files that way. You can leave the external drive plugged into the Dell permanently if you wish to use that for your media files, or just use internal storage for the media files.

I can definitely look into it.
My concern is some movie files are around 30-40gb ... will those play fine via the network??

 

[mnewsham]

I can definitely look into it.
My concern is some movie files are around 30-40gb ... will those play fine via the network??

Depends on the file type. If we are talking M2TS files, or similar uncompressed disc images, you'll want to encode them first. If the files are already in an MKV or similar container then Plex shouldn't have any problems assuming the hardware is up to the task.

 

[AnonymouseUser]

Depends on the file type. If we are talking M2TS files, or similar uncompressed disc images, you'll want to encode them first. If the files are already in an MKV or similar container then Plex shouldn't have any problems assuming the hardware is up to the task.

Plex will encode on the fly, but that size would be really taxing on the CPU. It also depends on the play time, though, as a 2 hour 30GB movie will be much more difficult than a 4 hour 30GB movie. If you have a gigabit network then you could turn off the encoding and see if it will work. That will put more strain on the network than server CPU. Wireless won't be up to the task.

 

[Davem88]

Ok .... success !

Took one of the 4TB drives, connected to my laptop running Windows 7, did DISK fix where it fixed something, connected it back to the media player by TV via USB and it was found.

Doing the same now to the 2nd 4TB hard drive.

So ... what is it? I can't use these 2 drives with my new PC that is running Windows 10?

 

[AnonymouseUser]

Try the driver I mentioned earlier.

Enhancements
- Improved system compatibility.

Category
Removable Storage

At least you know you can fix it with the laptop if need be.

 

[vailr]

Windows 10 seems to make some kind of minor modification to any HD/SSD that it "encounters", such that a subsequent "encounter" by an older O.S. is alerted that: that same HD/SSD is now "dirty" and needs to be CHKDSK scanned for errors.
No errors are actually found during the scan, however.
This doesn't always happen, but often enough to be annoying with a dual-booting PC using different HD's/SSD's for different OSes.
My example system: Windows 10, Windows 8.1 & Windows 7, all on separate HD's/SSD.

 

[Davem88]

Try the driver I mentioned earlier.



At least you know you can fix it with the laptop if need be.

I just searched for that update using my service tag and was unable to find it.
Maybe you have a link to it?

thank you.

 

[AnonymouseUser]

I just searched for that update using my service tag and was unable to find it.
Maybe you have a link to it?

thank you.

This one. I know it says Win7/8.1, but it will most likely work for 10 as well.

 

[Davem88]

Alright ... problem fixed! Took both drives and instead of using new PC's rear USB ports, I used front USB port. Works just fine! Or maybe it needed to be scanned once on the old computer and it doesn't really matter which USB port it is, back or front. Either way ... everything works now.

Or maybe it was 1 update I did (not the one recommended above though)