How To Use Pen Drive Or Hard Disk With Fire TV Edition Smart TV?

| Published: Thursday, January 30, 2020, 11:48 [IST]

While using the ONIDA Fire TV Edition smart TV, I tried using an HDD to access movies and videos but the television did not detect the storage device. Again, I tried to plug in another USB storage device and I was going nowhere. Then I thought that the USB port on the smart TV might be at fault. After doing a bit of research, I found out that this is the case with some of the Fire TV Edition smart television and there is a workaround to actually fix this issue.

Why Didn't ONIDA Fire TV Edition Detect My USB Storage Device?

Each time I tried to plug-in (three times to be precise) a USB storage device, I made sure that it was plugged in properly. In fact, some of the devices even had an LED indicator, which turned on after plugging-in to the TV but the television did not detect storage devices.

The problem was not with the smart TV, instead, it was something to do with the format of the USB storage device. Most of the modern storage devices use ExFAT or NTFS (new technology file system) format. However, the ONIDA Fire TV Edition will not recognize this format, hence it cannot read the files inside the USB.

The Solution

Then, I formatted one of the USB devices to FAT32 and copied some video files from my MacBook. As soon as I plugged in the USB drive, the smart TV detected it and started to show the files on the device. From this point, I was able to play locally stored videos without any issue.

If you have a smart TV powered by Fire OS, then make sure that the USB device that you are using is formatted in the FAT32 standard.

Limitations Of FAT32

There is a reason why most of the computers and storage devices do not use the FAT32 file system anymore. A USB device that uses the FAT32 standard can only load a file that is less than 4GB in size. If you have a 5GB file, then you will not be able to copy it on to the USB storage device.

This will be an issue, as watching HD movies (some of them will be over 5GB) will not be possible on the ONIDA Fire TV Edition or any other smart TV with Fire OS. If the Fire OS team is listening, please fix this issue and give support for both ExFAT and NTFS format standards as well.