How to hide files on an external hard drive when plugged in to the tv?

Question

I just bought a smart tv and when i Plugged in my external hard drive realized that my hidden videos i have on the hard drive are viewable! My way to hide them was by right click each file, properties and click hidden on my PC, and then they are not viewable on my PC but om my smart TV they are.

So is there any other way I can hide them so they are not viewable on my smart tv?

Answer 1

You can go into the Control Panel and click on "Appearance and Personalization" (in Category view) and then click on "Folder Options." Now, click on the "View" tab near the top of the page and you should see "Hidden Files and Folders" about five lines down. Click on "Don't show hidden files, folders, and drives." Now, if you are on "Small or large icon" view in the Control Panel it will be a little different. In this view you'll see a direct link to "Folder Options" on the left side about six lines down. My O/S is Windows 7, it should be similar with Windows XP, etc. Hope this helps!

Answer 2

If you have already set the "hidden" bit for the file and the TV is still showing the file then obviously the TV is ignoring file attributes. The only suggestion I can make is to also set the "system file" bit for the file. However, if your TV is ignoring file attributes it is probably ignoring all of them.

Answer 3

The ability to 'hide' files is unique to each operating system.



Since your TV is NOT running Windows or MacOS - it cannot honor or understand hidden or permission flags.



Can your smart TV see your PC hard drive over your home wireless? Since you would be going through your PC, it will let you only 'share' some folders and not others.



OTHER IDEA:



Plug your USB hard drive into your PC. Create a "TEST" folder, then under the TEST folder try creating sub-folders with under-scores, spaces or other special characters as the first character. Write these down.



Then plug the USB into your smart TV, go to the TEST folder and try to see if some of the special character folders do not show up. This will tell you how you might rename some folders so they do not show up.



NOTE: I bought a 2TB Western Digital 'Cloud' drive and plugged it into my wireless hub. Suddenly all the PC's, tablets and smart devices can see this drive and this is where I store my TV series and other media.



If I have temporary videos, I put these on a 64 gig flash drive for use on the TV. IMPORTANT: My Samsung TV has a 'history' feature that keeps a photo of my most recent videos. If you don't want people seeing thumb-nails of your viewing history, look how to clear your history on your TV.