1TB disk 'too large to format'

fenlander

Active Member
Does anyone have any idea why my HDR-T2 refuses to format its internal drive? Although the disk stats say it's a 1000GB drive (original equipment 1TB), attempting to format it results in a message saying it's 'too large to format'.

Is there any way to format via telnet?
 
We have seen this before, it's possible the disk is just over the limit of the standard Humax formatter, and of course drives are preformatted before assembly.

I think the custom "maintenance mode" tools can format it.
 
Would it be possible using the maintenance tools to simply delete the existing partitions and then let the Humax internal formatter do its work?
 
The internal formatter only knows how to partition drives of a certain size. If your replacement is even slightly different in geometry or size then it will report that it can't format it. I assume it has a lookup table somewhere.

You can use the maintenance mode tools in firmware 2.12 to create the partition table manually and then format from the command line or do the whole thing on a PC running Linux. I wrote up some of how I formatted my new 2TB disk on the Wiki which may help - http://wiki.hummy.tv/wiki/2TB_Disk_Installation_Blog but I didn't go into detail about how to use gfdisk.
 
Curiously, having refused to format the disk twice in the last week, when I turned the machine on tonight the Hummy told me that the disk needed to be formatted in order to use the recording functions. It then proceeded to format it normally.

I guess my attempts to format last night had indeed wiped the partition table and removed whatever was preventing the formatter from working.

All's well that ends well. Boot up is now notably quicker. It remains to be seen whether some read errors I was getting (when the machine was recording 2 HD streams and playing one in chase-play) have now been eliminated.

AF123 - it's not a replacement disk, it's the original. That's why I was so puzzled.
 
Even odder is that my original 500GB disk now does the same thing! There are some problem files that I can't delete after a bit of 'messing around', so I thought the easiest solution would be to reformat after a backup. Existing recordings seem to be fine. The area that I've messed up is in the nicesplice edit / cut directory.

Oops - This of course means that I'm running Custom FW, just noticed that this thread is in the non custom section of the forum.


Solved - I power cycled the Humax, when it came back on it said the disk needed to be formatted. Did that and now all is ok. Maybe some errors in the partition table prevented it the first time? Strange things these computers.
 
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