[SOLVED] Could not play videos - iso, mp4 etc from hdd

[StartledCat]

Hi Folks,

I am posting this up as Solved, as I sorted this one out myself...and am posting it as I think it will help others:

Last week I got hold of an external hdd - the plan being I could put my dvds on it and play them from my RPi2/kodi/xbian.

Without going in to too much detail, the first batch of films when on to the hdd and played back fine - DVD Shrink coped with the majority...some had to be done using a trail version of DVD Fab.

All was going well, until yesterday, when the file transfer to the hdd seemed to slow down. Having scanned the hdd, found no problems - back to the copy...not faster, but they got there in the end.

Today, I connected the hdd to the rpi2 - none of the films I had done the day before ran.

After much head-banging and file re-generation, I finally resorted to trying mp4 format, rather than iso - still didn't work.

So, back to basics:
Am on Windows 7, with a Toshiba 1TB hdd.
Run the mp4 from Windows - runs ok
Run the mp4 from hdd under rp12/xbian - error reading file (from log).
Run the mp4 from hdd under Windows - error reading file.
Files appear to be the same, but....

Having trawled the web, found some 'similar' issues with hdd/usb drives/sd cards etc., all advising the same kind of thing...e.g. corrupt file/corrupt disk - not a real help.

DING! then the penny dropped...a few days ago when the hdd was connected to Win7, I changed the drive/folder optimization option from General to Videos (seemed like a good idea at the time).

So, I have changed this option back to 'General' and it all works fine.

Hope this helps others, as I spent a while trying to get to the bottom of this one.