USB Hard Drive not Recognized

I purchased a TV Box MXQ4k to take me on a trip to the wilderness. There is not Internet Access or even phone access in the area. I have the same TV boxes at home I use on a daily basis, and thought that this box was new and should work fine. BIG PROBLEM***
The reason for taking it was to do nothing more than use my USB drives on it to watch movies.
BIG PROBLEM*** I plugged in the first USB drive, and the box did not recognize it. So, I tried my other, and same problem. Finally after playing around with the box, I found an App that told me that the Hard Drive was corrupted and needed to be formatted. Both Drives are formatted with the NTFS file system. I am back home now, and the Hard Drives work fine in my other TV boxes.
When I left, I forgot the box so I cannot do anything with it from here. Next time I will take one of my home boxes with me. I live about 6 hours away from the location, and do not visit it enough to get satellite Internet. Plus I am not sure that I would be able to get any Internet in that location anyway. Yes, it may be in the forbidden zone. I do know that even to get a cell connection it is about 2 hours away.
Any Suggestions, or should I just carry a TV box that I know will play my USB drives?
Now the question? Do you have to have a Google account for an Android Box to do anything?