My Humax Forum » Freesat HD » FOXSAT HDR

WD10EURX 1TB hard drive work OK in Foxsat HDR?

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    artwwweb

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    I’ve bought a 1Tb drive to upgrade my Foxsat HDR, but when I installed the drive, it was not recognised. So I installed the drive in a caddy, and formatted to FAT32, to make sure that the drive was working OK. I then installed in the drive back in the Humax but again it wasn’t recognised. (I chose FAT 32 knowing that FAT32 is recognised by the Humax, though I appreciate it should be EXT3.)

    The drive is WD10EURX – so it’s a WD AV-GP as recommended. I can see from the Amazon and eBuyer reviews that it has been installed in other PVRs OK. I’m not a hardware expert, so I’m (desperately) wondering if it might be because the cache is too large? (64Mb) or maybe because it’s SATA III? It would be nice to know if other people have got this specific drive working in the Foxsat.

    Any ideas on what I could try next?

    Thanks.

    | Tue 4 Sep 2012 13:44:21 #1 |
  2. grahamlthompson

    grahamlthompson

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    Try formatting the drive EXT3.

    Delete the existing partition, recreate and format EXT3.

    http://www.partition-tool.com/personal.htm

    | Tue 4 Sep 2012 13:53:19 #2 |
  3. REPASSAC

    REPASSAC

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    Did you see any popup messages or any on the Foxsat front panel?

    | Tue 4 Sep 2012 13:55:45 #3 |
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    artwwweb

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    I thought formatting as EXT3 might be the next option.
    Messages - just had a messagebox which said, I think, "HDD not present" - it gave me the impression that it wasn't an error as such, just that it had not found an HDD when it was booting. The Humax worked fine but obviously no drive. Working fine since re-installing the original drive.
    I will try to install the EXT3 formatted drive in the next few days (got visitors at the moment so dismantling the box is not an option). In the meantime, I will try the Partition Master on the drive.

    Thank you both for your help.

    | Tue 4 Sep 2012 15:30:05 #4 |
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    artwwweb

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    To be on the safe side, using Partition Master, I actually created 4 partitions on the drive, as suggested here: http://www.avforums.com/forums/freesat/1274061-humax-foxsat-hdr-1tb-hard-drive-upgrade.html

    (For future reference, the sizes need to be entered in Mb, so they are: 2058Mb (2.01Gb), 102Mb (101.98Mb), 950671Mb (928.39Gb), 1034Mb (1.01Gb) )

    I then formatted each partition as primary EXT3 and with a cluster size of 4Kb. (Initially, I used the default of 1Kb cluster size, but this was a mistake – with the approx 928.39Gb partition, approx. 50% - over 400Gb – became used on the ‘empty’ partition. The 4k cluster size reduced the used space to about 1.7% of the total space. )

    However, still no joy – the box boots fine but just doesn’t recognise the HDD. Message says “HDD not recognised. Please check your HDD”.

    So, I reformatted the drive with a single partition for the full size of the disc, Primary EXT3.

    The disc is an ‘advanced format’ drive, which apparently need special formatting to work to their full efficiency, so the problem may be something to do with that, because the Foxsat was designed before Advance Format drives were available. However, the Adv F drives have been around for a few years, so I imagine that earlier WD AVGP drives are also Adv F and have worked OK in the Foxsat. Also, the advance formatting only helps create the best efficiency; I get the impression that the disc should still be recognised but possibly not full capacity or fastest access. The only other thing I can think of is that it is SATA III, but similar logic applies – I imagine that it should still be recognised even if not at its most efficient. http://www.wdc.com/global/products/features/?id=7&language=1

    So…
    Maybe some Linux expert has got this drive working, otherwise, I think I’ve just got a new large external drive!

    Is there a recent list of drives that are known to work? I’ve seen a few mentioned, but they all seemed to be out of date – the drives are no longer available.

    | Thu 6 Sep 2012 13:54:29 #5 |
  6. myhumax

    myhumax

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    I suspect, like you, it is the SATA III specification rather than the Advanced Format, that is the problem here.

    Unfortunately, my list here: http://myhumax.org/wiki/index.php/FOXSAT-HDR_Simple_HDD_Swap is old too.

    You can read my experience with an Advanced Format drive here: http://myhumax.org/blog/?p=399

    You might want to find out if you could switch the mode of the disk from SATA III to SATA II within the disk's firmware - if that is possible at all...

    | Thu 6 Sep 2012 17:27:16 #6 |
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    artwwweb

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    @son_t thanks for your reply. I’m struggling a little to take in all the info because it’s spread around a number of posts, and I’m not a Linux user. So you had trouble with an AF drive but once formatted correctly it worked OK in the Foxsat? I must admit I’m feeling cautious – all the documentation seems to imply that the drive should still be recognised, but perhaps not optimally. Which means that the problem I get – completely unrecognised – seems like a different problem. (My health is not so good, so it’s a bit of an effort to dismantle the Humax, and I’m not sure I could handle another, this time more-complicated, session of formatting the drive, swapping it in and finding the dreaded ‘not found’ message :-))

    In summary, you are suggesting using GParted to partion as per the second half of your post 399? If so, looks like there’s quite a few things I need to learn.

    | Fri 7 Sep 2012 9:30:07 #7 |
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    artwwweb

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    Got the fix. The problem was because the drive is SATA III (6Gb/s) and it looks like the Humax can only handle SATA II. My drive is now installed and working. So, this drive is suitable for the upgrade, and if anybody has this or another SATA III drive that is not recognised, I suggest the same fix.

    The problem is explained a bit here. It’s actually talking about SATA II not being recognised by SATA I controllers, but the concept is exactly the same:
    http://wdc.custhelp.com/app/answers/detail/search/1/a_id/1337/c/130/p/227,294

    But the actual fix is extremely simple. You just need to place a jumper (shunt) over pins 5 and 6, to get the drive to reduce its speed. There is a diagram in the above article to help you locate the correct pins.
    I tried writing to WD to ask for the software mentioned in the article but they ignored that and told me to get a jumper. I didn’t have any spare, so had to buy a pack of 50 (!) from Maplin for £1.99. Which means that my days of tearing my hair out were solved in 2 seconds by a component that cost just under 4p.

    Thanks again to all for your help.

    | Fri 21 Sep 2012 12:47:59 #8 |
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    Get Go

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    Thanks for taking the time to post the fix for everyone else. Cheers.

    Here's a webcite archive copy of that fix link in case it goes AWOL in the future http://www.webcitation.org/6Arnvi8ct

    | Sat 22 Sep 2012 11:20:09 #9 |

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