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Make your WD Passport work with any USB DVD Player

video Make your WD Passport work with any USB DVD Player

When I first bought my Western Digital Passport drive I had all intentions of putting hundreds of movies on it and plugging it into my USB enabled DVD player that's hooked up to my TV. Unfortunately it didn't work :( The drive draws power through the USB cable, and the LG DVD player I have, doesn't supply enough. I thought that if I bought an external case with it's own power adapter, took the drive out of the Passport and put it in there, it might work. Nope didn't work either, it was still drawing power from the DVD player. Last night my brother said "All you need to do is find the pin in the USB cable that has power and disconnect it." Eureka!

As always you do this at your own risk and I will not be responsible for any damages to your drive, dvd player, or computer. Everything worked fine for me though.

This would also work with a Computer that doesn't have enough power to run a Passport.

4 comments

May 14, 2011. 6:18 PM

punx777 says:

Nice instructable. I wasnt clear with why you were doing this as i dont know what a usb dvd player is.........

So basically, you are using your tv to browse your external hard drive? Sounds awesome i'm just confused will you please tell me more about this tv?

It just seems very weird that the usb port on the tv is not already powered....... this must mean that its only meant to be used with a wall-powered usb dvd player. but it wouldnt work for charging your cell phone, ps3 remote, or even a thumb drive. Please explain.

May 14, 2011. 8:47 PM

kansasa (author) says:

I don't have a usb port on my tv. The passport drive is connected to my DVD player which is connected to my tv. The DVD player I had didn't have enough power to run the passport drive so it would send very low power and it wasn't enough to run it. I had to cut the two power wires so the DVD player couldn't send power back to the passport but still needed full power so spliced in a power cord that you plugged into the wall and that was enough to run it. Basically a "Y" cable. I hope that clears up the confusion. :)

May 15, 2011. 12:42 PM

punx777 says:

cool it all makes sense now. do the passports still come with the dual-usb end? (one micro usb end, and two standard computer usb ends) These are designed to both be plugged into the same computer for this very reason. to supplement.

Anyway im sure your dvd player didnt have two usb ports right by eachother did it?

May 15, 2011. 12:54 PM

kansasa (author) says:

No all three of the passports I have only have one connection, mini usb at one end and regular usb at the other end. From what I read the older passports had what you describe. No my dvd player only had one usb and not enough power to run the passport. It would light up the drive but not enough to actually run it. So even just a regular Y cable wouldn't have helped me, I needed a Y with external power. The cord I made can also work for hooking up your passport to a laptop that doesn't have enough power to run it (although I've never had that happen with my laptop.).