Folks, if I was to buy or borrow a replacement hard drive, what specs do I need to comply with? What can I use and what can't I use? I believe it would need to be a SATA drive. What is the largest size that this unit can take? I know some people have used a 2TB drive successfully (and indeed this box can be bought brand new with a 2TB drive) but although some Googling and searching has revealed talk of people trying 3TB drives, I've not found any reports of anyone having success with 3TB internal.
My Humax Forum » Freesat HD » HDR 1000, 1010, 1100S
'Starting' keeps recycling - won't boot up
(60 posts)-
| Mon 2 Mar 2015 21:24:00 #41 |
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You ideally need a drive specified for consumer electronics (CE) rather than a PC specced drive. A drive specified for PC data storage will work, but over a long period data integrity checks will create glitches in recording a continuous data stream.
PVR's impose different performance requirements to those specified for use in PC's as data storage media.
http://www.wdc.com/wdproducts/library/SpecSheet/ENG/2879-701250.pdf
I have had a WD AV-GP 2TB drive self installed from launch of the box. So far no problems.
| Mon 2 Mar 2015 21:37:43 #42 | -
Thanks Graham, much appreciated.
Another update...
- Disconnected hard drive and powered box on. Result: box got beyond the STARTING/freesat/Humax displays and to the on-screen installation wizard.
- Powered off, reconnected hard drive and powered on. Result: same fault as earlier, i.e. STARTING/freesat/Humax displays, restarts itself, STARTING/freesat/Humax displays, restarts itself, etc, etc, continually.Conclusion: hard drive kaput. Will hang on for any other tips on selecting a replacement hard drive, but having had a quick look at prices I think I might as well go for a 2TB. (Unless anyone has got a 3TB or larger working..?)
| Mon 2 Mar 2015 22:10:50 #43 | -
you haven't said whether you have a 500GB or 1TB model.
what does SMART tell you, also can you read the partition table?
you'll probably find the drive isn't kaputt, just some of the data on it is corruptedThe quality of hard drives isn't what it used to be as costs have come down. A fair amount of drives out there only have one years warranty, 90 days in the usa, it's just unfortunate that we don't have a standard 2 years as in many EU countries.
Any 500GB or larger sata will be fine for testing. I've not heard of anybody using smaller, but I'd be surprised if 250GB, 320GB etc. wouldn't work just in case you have some of these knocking around.
Any slower speed low power 5900rpm or lower, intelli-power, green etc. sata will be fine for continuous use.
As far as I know you're not going to get any >2TB to work or at most only get 2TB available as the kernel's likely to have a 32bit limitation.
It'd be worthwhile testing the box with an old drive first to make sure power supply and controller are in order before purchasing a new 2TB drive. Alternatively, as Repassac suggested and if you don't want to play with the drive and SMART isn't showing any problems then wiping the original drive is likely to work.
| Tue 3 Mar 2015 1:08:10 #44 | -
Sorry, I thought I had said in my original post that it's a 1TB model but I see now that I didn't.
Agreed, makes sense to try the unit with another suitable drive before shelling out for a new one. I'll ask around in the office when I'm next in there.
I've not looked at the partition table or SMART statistics yet as I only have laptops at home and I don't have the necessary cables or adapters to hook this drive up to them. Again, I'll ask around in the office to see what I can borrow (maybe even a desktop computer to pop it in) or if necessary, buy what I need.
One thing I'll be interested to try (if the disk is readable) is to copy all the data off the disk (using dd for example; if I have somewhere big enough to copy it to that is) then wipe the disk, copy it all back and see what happens. If necessary, I can also try deleting/restoring specific partitions as previously suggested.
| Tue 3 Mar 2015 10:06:29 #45 | -
not too sure if humax simply sold more 1TB's, but they seem to come up more often as having problems. Unfortunately if you want to play it'll just take twice as long to move data around if at all possible.
Some people have had problems with sata III drives and have had to put a jumper on to drop it down to sata II, not too sure if this is still a problem.
docking stations come relatively cheap, most handle up to 2TB, this one can handle >2TB at around £15. not a recommendation, just an observation as to what's out there and I'm 99.9% certain >2TB won't work directly/internally anyway with the humax.
http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/dodocool-USB3-0-5Gbps-3-5-2-5-SATA-Vertical-Hard-Drive-Docking-Station-UK-Plug-/131102621569?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_3&hash=item1e86533f81let us know how you get on, it'd be interesting to see what can be rescued
| Tue 3 Mar 2015 11:52:15 #46 | -
Thanks. It's a Seagate Pipeline 1TB that's in mine. Don't forget it was a Grade A unit so presumably there may have been a fault on it before that, unless it was just an unwanted return. Who knows, maybe the hard drive had a fault and was wiped and reinstalled, or was replaced with another one which had a latent fault, or there was a bad batch, etc, etc...
Thanks for the hard drive docking station tip. I'll see if anyone at work has one first. Been spending way too much money recently! I know it's only £15, but every little helps, as a certain well known supermarket likes to say.
| Tue 3 Mar 2015 12:31:28 #47 | -
Well folks, bet you thought I'd never come back but here I am, and the saga continues. Sorry to bump an old thread but this is a continuation of the same problem so I think it's valid.
To try to cut a long story a bit shorter, I bought a brand new Western Digital WD20EURX 2TB drive. I installed it, the box saw it, prompted to format it, did so successfully and everything worked*... for about a week. (* I say everything worked but apparently it did restart itself without warning at least a couple of times - it's difficult for me to give more detail there as I work away during the week so I'm reliant on what my fiancée can tell me, and she doesn't notice much of that sort of thing, as long as things seem to work most of the time.) The latest symptom was that the box would not power up - not even after an extended period without mains power - and not even with the red standby light illuminated.
Then we went on holiday for a couple of weeks and have been v busy since then, so have just been managing without satellite/Freesat. During the past couple of weekends I've taken a bit of time to try to look at it again. What it is doing now is, when first connected to mains, it soon says STARTING on the built in display but then seems to get stuck in a loop. The power supply and something on the board are making audible noises, in synchronisation. Note that I have the drive disconnected again, so it's not that. In fact I have virtually everything disconnected, including all external cables apart from power supply, the drive, the SATA cable power and data connectors disconnected from the board, and even the fan disconnected from the board too.
It's difficult to describe the noise. It's not too loud, but still distinctly audible. I suppose it sounds a bit like one of those flapper things you used to have against the spokes of a bike wheel - percussive, perhaps. The green LED on the power supply also flashes seemingly in synchronisation with the noise (never goes off completely but goes dim/bright/dim/bright in sync). I've also noticed that the red SPDIF port light/laser seems to flash/illuminate in sync with the noise and PSU LED also.
So I am now wondering whether the power supply is faulty and perhaps that was it all along (especially as I could find no fault with the original 1TB drive when connected to my computer). It is a Ktec 'switch mode power supply', 12v, 1.2A I think from memory. (I don't have it with me at the moment.)
I'm thinking my next step should be to try a different power supply, but I'm not sure what I need, and I don't really want to spend more money and buy one if it turns out not to be that (e.g. if there is a fault on the board itself). I will look for a local electronics specialist where I can 'try before I buy' but I don't know how much luck I'll have.
Can anyone help explain what sort of power supply I need? Obviously it needs the correct shape and polarity of connector but does it just need to be able to supply up to 1.2A at 12v or is there more to it than that? Does it *need* to be a switch mode power supply or is that just a power saving (efficiency) thing and has no effect on the satellite box?
All help will be much appreciated as always...
| Thu 7 May 2015 11:56:58 #48 | -
A search using "power supply HDR-1000S" yields quite some results.
| Thu 7 May 2015 12:50:48 #49 | -
It does indeed, and I did do a few searches, including on Amazon UK too. It's not just about the cost, but if I order online I will have to wait for delivery (which will also cost a bit extra and probably take a bit longer, because I'm in Ireland) and it would be a right PITA to wait for that only to find that it didn't fix the problem, not to mention the annoyance of the wasted money. So that's why I want to try before I buy, and that in turn is why I'm asking what spec of power supply I need, because I don't consider myself well informed enough about DC power supplies to know the answer myself.
| Thu 7 May 2015 13:14:18 #50 |
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