Using external harddrives with pine?

[skybadiver]

I initially purchased the pine64 thinking I could plug my external harddrive into it and watch movies that are saved there.  Unfortunately, I discovered that the pine will not recognize the harddrive.  It made some clicking sounds but that was about it.  I love the pine so far as a computer for my living room but I would love to be able to solve this movie watching problem.  Does anyone have any suggestions or solutions they might offer.

[rahlquist]

The clicking is usually indicative of not enough power. Were you trying to power the external drive via usb? I have used both a External powered and usb powered drive on the pine. The external powered worked, the usb powered just clicked.

[skybadiver]

May I ask what powered external harddrive you have?  The one I have is USB powered and it didn't work.

[androsch]

Did you try an active powered USB hub to connect the pine and your drive? On my PIs i also use all peripheral with active powered hubs and everything works fine. Didn't try on the pine yet, but will do and come back with info....

Did try to mount an external USB drive (ext4) via active powered hub, worked fine, could automount and use without problems. So you should try this...

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[rahlquist]

May I ask what powered external harddrive you have?  The one I have is USB powered and it didn't work.

The powered one I have I cant recommend, it has a firmware issue with sleep mode. 

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.as...6817576014

That should give you an idea at least. 

The unpowered unit is a Toshiba 500gb I picked up at radio shack when they were closing.

[CaptainZalo]

The pine doesn't give enough power over the USB port to power a disk. Get a powered usb hub or a powered pass-through cable. I have the same problem on my TV.

[jjmgryphon]

Quick lession on USB. The USB slots on the Pine are 5 volt, 0.5 amp. I've verified this cause I was planning on doing the same thing. Most USB hard drives require 5 volt, 1 amp to power correctly. Desktops usually can supply up to 1-2 amps depending on how the motherboard is configured. You will need a powered USB hub that has an external power connector (wall plug) to make it work right or McGyver the solution I have. I'm currently using 2 usb cables that have the power lines spliced together to get enough power for a USB external drive. This will take up both usb slots on the Pine for most people. I'm using the spliced cable, a wall plug and extension cable to just use one USB slot on the Pine. It isn't elegant but it works. Hope this helps.

[rahlquist]

Another thread with comment by one of the people responsible stated shut down current for this board is 650ma so yeah that all make sense. http://forum.pine64.org/showthread.php?t...95#pid6395

[skybadiver]

Thanks for all the responses! I purchased a Sabrent 4-Port USB 3.0 Hub with Individual Power Switches and LEDs included 5V/2.5A power adapter from amazon. Tried it today and it runs my external hard drive very well! I also ran the micro usb from the hub to see if that would also power the board itself and it does. So now I am powering the board and my external with the same hub.

[montero65]

Wow, that's pretty awesome. I was linked to this thread from another one I had going about power supplies. I was going to go for the powered USB hub because I was having the exact same problem as you with my hard drive (even got the Pine for the same purpose!). I wasn't loving the idea of having multiple power cords going (one for Pine, one for hub), so the fact that you can also power the Pine via this hub is pretty exciting. I guess I'll be picking one of those up from Amazon! Thanks for the report!