My Humax Forum » Freesat HD » FOXSAT HDR

Adding an 8Tb external drive

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    AlMurphy

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    I have been using two 1Tbyte drives formatted EXT3 by a Linux boot disk the last 20 years with no problem

    Due to BBC and others dropping SD transmission, HD recording requires lots more recording capacity

    I have bought a Seagate 8Tbyte external USB drive and formatted it EXT3 using EasyUS to about 7.25Tbytes with 4k cluster size

    The Freesat box does not recognise the drive, any ideas e.g.

    Is there a partition limit of say 2TB and if so can I partition the drive as 4 x 2 TBytes

    Would ext4 work ?

    Any other thoughts appreciated

    Thanks
    Alan..

    | Wed 8 Mar 2023 11:58:06 #1 |
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    Martin Liddle

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    AlMurphy - 36 mins ago  » 
    The Freesat box does not recognise the drive, any ideas e.g.
    Is there a partition limit of say 2TB and if so can I partition the drive as 4 x 2 TBytes

    The problem is that as far as I know, the Foxsat will only recognise an MBR style partition table which is limited to 2TB and to format an 8TB drive you must have used a GPT style partition table.

    Would ext4 work ?

    No.

    | Wed 8 Mar 2023 12:40:17 #2 |
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    AlMurphy

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    Hi Martin,

    Many thanks for your quick reply

    Do you think I can format my 8Tbyte drive as 4 x 2Tbyte MBR style partitions ?

    If I can how would the box see each partition ?

    What software would create 4 x 2Tb. I don't think EaseUS will do this, at least not the free version

    Many thanks
    Alan..

    | Wed 8 Mar 2023 12:49:44 #3 |
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    AlMurphy

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    Hi Martin,

    Some more info..

    Reading the internet, apparently up to 4 MBR partitions can be created on one drive

    | Wed 8 Mar 2023 12:53:29 #4 |
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    Martin Liddle

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    AlMurphy - 4 mins ago  » 
    Do you think I can format my 8Tbyte drive as 4 x 2Tbyte MBR style partitions ?
    If I can how would the box see each partition ?

    I am very doubtful that it would work but partitioning is a dark art and you need to find a forum with partitioning knowledge to get a definitive answer.

    | Wed 8 Mar 2023 12:58:30 #5 |
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    Martin Goose

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    I find GParted Live very good for partitioning.

    https://gparted.org/liveusb.php

    | Thu 9 Mar 2023 8:05:40 #6 |
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    AlMurphy

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    Hi, Martin & Martin,

    Thank you both for your help.

    As you suggested, I am convinced MBR has the 2T limit and it can't be extended.

    Do you know of any new Humax satellite receiver which uses GPT and will allow external drives to be added say up to
    32 TBytes in the future.

    I would still ideally want two LNB inputs

    A TV with a sat tuner built in would also work for us.

    It does not have to be Humax, any make would be fine.

    Thanks
    Alan..

    | Fri 10 Mar 2023 9:13:20 #7 |
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    Martin Liddle

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    AlMurphy - 1 hour ago  » 
    Do you know of any new Humax satellite receiver which uses GPT and will allow external drives to be added say up to 32 TBytes in the future.

    Humax lost the contract to produce Freesat boxes so there is no Humax box that will meet that requirement. There is a 4K Freesat box produced by Arris but I know nothing about it. There are threads about it over at DigitalSpy and AVForums so it might be worth asking in those forums about GPT support. Another alternative might be a non Freesat satellite box; somebody popped up on another forum recently and recommended the Zgemma H9. NB I know nothing about this box or non Freesat satellite receivers in general; you certainly won't get the Freesat EPG. However it does use the Linux operating system so I think there is a very good chance that it will support GPT drives. You will have a lot to learn. Do your homework and buy from a supplier such as Amazon with the ability to return if not suitable if you go down this route.

    | Fri 10 Mar 2023 11:11:39 #8 |

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