Camcorder stopped recognizing new portable hard drives????

[Biminitwist]

I have a Sony CX550 which allows for a direct copy from the camera's internal hard drive to a portable hard drive, typically all my video is backed up in this manner.
Lately the camcorder has stopped recognizing new hard drives, it will give the dreaded "usb device not recognized" warning leaving the only option to end and disconnect the USB.
I have tried wiping and reformating the new portable drives to FAT32 though my desk top computer with the same results.
Normally with a new portable hard drive the camcorder would ask the first time to reformat the data base before copying and once done automatically start executing a direct copy.
Now though, it refuses to recognize the hard drive to even do that.
At first I thought the new hard drive was just defective so exchanged it, then tried another brand, then even a smaller size (500 GB).
What is strange is any compatible hard drive (even of the same brand-model just purchased) that has anything previously loaded on it directs copies just fine.
I have two seemingly identical Seagate 1 TB hard drives but the new one will not be recognized!
After escalating through all levels of Sony phone support, we established it was not the USB or VMA adapter cable issue and if the camera still direct copies to an old hard drive, it is not the camera.
Also, there are no firmware updates, resetting the camera doesn't help, plugging-unplugging the usb, even copying a small bit of video to the new drive thru the desk top (to trick the camcorder into recognizing the drive) have failed to get the new portable hard drives to be recognized (even when reformatted).
I have a number of portable hard drives from various trips that I could copy to a larger storage drive then wipe the portable to reuse it (so that at least the camcorder will recognize it) but that is obviously a poor workaround.
I know hard drives over 1 TB are not supposed to work for direct copy because of how they are partitioned but unless Seagate and Western Digital have changed something radically they are the same drives I am currently using.
I would very much welcome any ideas to try and get the camcorder to recognize the new drives.
Thanks.
John

 

[EL Pistoffo]

My 1st thought was the drives format type but you said you formatted FAT32 and it still didn't work. One thing you can try is to take the hard drive that does still work and plug it into a computer and check its properties to see what format type it is, i.e. FAT, FAT32, NTFS to be certain. Also check the drive through Disk Management and insure the volume is mounted and the partition is good.


Another possibility is the new hard drives you are using are USB 3 standard. Many of the new USB 3 drives are backwards compatible to USB 2 but your may not be or your camera has issue with backward compatible drives.

 

[dfx]

What is strange is any compatible hard drive (even of the same brand-model just purchased) that has anything previously loaded on it directs copies just fine.
I have two seemingly identical Seagate 1 TB hard drives but the new one will not be recognized!

This leads me to believe that it's a formatting issue.

There's two parts to what's commonly referred to as hard drive "formatting": the partitioning and the file system.

Every hard drive needs to be partitioned. Usually you have a single partition spanning the entire hard drive. Anything more than a single partition is likely to confuse the camera.

Then there's the question about how it's partitioned. Until recently, virtually all (PC) hard drives were partitioned using the MBR partition table. The new partitioning scheme is called GPT and is required for anything larger than 2 TB. It's almost a certainty that your Sony camera would support only MBR partitions, and not GPT partitions.

The last thing is the file system, which you've already addressed. FAT32 is probably the sanest choice.

Therefore, I'd recommend connecting the hard drive to a PC and checking how it's partitioned. Make sure it's only one partition (and also not "no partition", which is possible and common e.g. on USB keys) and that it's using MBR partitions. Note that repartitioning would probably wipe out all contents.