my tv doesnt recognize my wd 1tb essentials hard drive

[fordsarethebest]

i have put a movie on my wd essentials and can watch the movie on my computer but when it is connected to my tv i cant watch the movie when i bought the hard drive i deleted everything of the drive accidentally so mayby i have no driver now can anyone help please

 

[Gillerer]

When "deleting everyting", did you format the drive?

Check what file system the drive is using:
1) Attach the external drive to a computer.
2) Open "My Computer" in Explorer.
3) Right-click on the external drive, select "Properties".
4) Check what "File System" says.

All devices can read FAT32 file system, but it has a file size limitation of about 4 GiB, so you can't store very large files. All external storage comes formatted in FAT32 out of the factory. If the file system is already FAT32, the problem lies elsewhere.

If the file system is NTFS, this is probably the problem. It is much better for Windows use, but not all appliances support it. To fix it:
5) Make sure you have copies of all files you want to save stored elsewhere (other than the external drive).
6) Format the drive by right-clicking in "My Computer", then selecting "Format". Select "FAT32" as the file system.
7) Copy the needed files back to the drive. (Remember, you can only store files whose size is at most (4 GiB - 1 byte).

 

[SuperSoph_WD]

Welcome to the community, @fordsarethebest!

Usually you need a driver for your computer to recognize the external hardware device (in your case the WD Essentials), this means that it's not contained on the HDD itself. I believe that @Gillerer is right and you are most probably dealing with a TV that is unable to recognize an NTFS-formatted external. This is the default file system that a Windows OS computer uses and it's how your WD Essentials is most probably formatted. In order for us to determine this, I'd suggest you post a screenshot of your Disk management in Windows. The file system of the drive should be displayed there.
You should also check your TV manual and see what kind of file system it uses. Most of the new TVs are able to read from an NTFS-formatted HDD, however the older models tend to use the most common (easily read by many devices) FAT32 file system, as it was already mentioned by @Gillerer.
In order to reformat your external WD HDD in that file system, you can also use this guide from our knowledge base.

If you have any questions, let us know!
SuperSoph_WD