Tech

How to format a USB for your Smart TV

Anyone would say that today it is no longer necessary to put anything in a USB to watch it on TV, Nothing could be further from the truth. The truth is that there can be many and very different reasons for maintaining old customs like the one at hand and, in case you need it, here is a brief tip on how to do it.

The point is that almost everyone already pulls content online which, as long as everything goes well, is much more comfortable. Nobody denies it. But from time to time and even habitually, you may need to download little things from the Internet, put them in a flash drive and plug it into the television, normal or “smart”, to see them there. And until now there used to be no problems, because everything was very basic: formatting in FAT32 and running.

But 4K and FAT32 arrived and its limit of 4 GB for files has fallen short, very short. This, coupled with the fact that smart TVs are really stupid on more occasions than is desirable -almost always due to the manufacturer’s fault- makes it worthwhile to format the drive on your own rather than trust the device, although there are a few things to consider. things more than anything, for knowledge and saving time.

Things like the fact that even though the vast majority of TV systems you find out there will be Android, which after all is Linux and since Linux almost always uses the Ext3/Ext4 file system, depending on the model and its antiquity. But don’t go to format your USB in Ext3/Ext4, because it won’t work for you. The same happens with automatic formatting: it depends on the model and its characteristics, but there are still televisions that format the USb in FAT32 and not in exFAT, supported from Android 4.1…

In short, you save time and trouble doing it yourself… how? With our old friend Rufus, for example. You download it, you execute it, you put the skewer…

usb tv

And in the option of “Boot choice” you choose “Not self-executing«.

usb tv

In the “Partition scheme” option, choose “GPT» just for not worrying about where you put the USB.

usb tv

And in the “File system” option, choose “extFAT“, although it was most likely selected automatically.

usb tv

You format the USB, connect it and put the files you want. Once you use it, you will see that on Smart TV with Android TV it has regenerated the typical Android directories, so you can use them for better organization, if you prefer. And that’s it.

In summary, nonsense because of the basics of the matter, but an anger that you save if you know it beforehand.

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