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4tb internal drive?

I created the 3 "ext3 standard partitions 1gb,3.6gb and 10gb on the 4tb drive and copied all the files from the 1tb drive and booted the humax...
as expected it came up and said the drive needs formatting.

questions:

why does the 4tb drive work fine on the usb but not on internal?
am I the first person to have a 4tb drive working on usb? it appears so..
is the usb socket on the humax usb2 or usb3? front and back?
could it be something to do with the file permissions and ownership of the files copied to the 4tb disk?
could it be something to do with the mount? could I edit fstab so it knows the 4tb drive is there or should it automount?
am I missing something? im probably missing a lot but I will figure it out im sure.
 
Both ports on the Humax are USB2. Can you ignore the needs formatting message and log in over telnet and see if anything is mounted and what gfdisk says about the disk?
I don't know of anyone else who has got a disk over 2TB working via USB.
 
in /etc/fstab why are /dev/sda1 and /dev/sda2 commented out? how are the partitions mounting? and why 2 partitions when there are 3 partitions?

im back on my 1tb drive for the moment..

# /etc/fstab: static file system information.
#
# <file system> <mount pt> <type> <options> <dump> <pass>

/dev/root / jffs2 rw,noauto 0 1
proc /proc proc defaults 0 0
devpts /dev/pts devpts defaults,gid=5,mode=620 0 0
tmpfs /tmp tmpfs defaults 0 0
sysfs /sys sysfs defaults 0 0

#/dev/sda1 /mnt/hd1 ext3 rw,defaults,data=journal 0
#/dev/sda2 /mnt/hd2 ext3 rw,defaults,data=ordered 0
 
fstab is largely ignored. The disk is powered up and mounted by the Humax software.
 
af123 said:
Both ports on the Humax are USB2. Can you ignore the needs formatting message and log in over telnet and see if anything is mounted and what gfdisk says about the disk?
I don't know of anyone else who has got a disk over 2TB working via USB.
Click to expand...


OK ill have a look at gfdisk. it may be later today or tomorrow , I will post as soon as I can.

ps. I was using a usb3 hub on the humax when I had it working as external usb. its interesting to note when I plugged the 4tb drive in my centos pc with a usb2 adapter it recognized the drive as 1.8tb, the usb3 adapter shows it as 3.72 tb
 
Rounding up several posts...

I can't imagine why you were optimistic it would work, but thanks for trying.

The only reason the drive could have worked externally was if your formatting process realised it would have to create larger sectors so as not to exceed the maximum sector count in the partition tables and file pointers. The internal formatting process doesn't have that much intelligence. 1.03.12 hasn't been out that long, so an updated kernel is not involved. It seems you succeeded by ignorance: had you asked about using a 4TB drive (even externally) we would probably have said it is unlikely to work - but as noted by the references in Things Every... there is mention of making a 3TB drive work by the same process.

The HDR-FOX ports are USB2. You would see the difference if they were USB3. See Things Every... as previously noted.

No, it is not something simple that stops it working as the internal HDD. Like I said before, it is incompatible with the Humax firmware for use internally and the best you could hope for is that it was recognised as a smaller drive and only part of its capacity put to use.

Drive differences: a general purpose PC drive mostly sits there doing nothing much other than spinning, and then it is asked to provide some data from a random part of the disk surface as quickly as possible, in bursts. An "AV" drive mostly spends its time transferring data onto or off the disk relatively slowly in a continuous stream to/from sequential areas of the surface, preferably with a low power consumption to reduce the heat build-up. The two situations thus require the drive parameters to be optimised for each - that is not to say a drive would not work at all in the other situation, but it would not perform as well and may hit reliability issues.
 
humax# gfdisk -l
Error: /dev/mtdblock6: unrecognised disk label
Error: /dev/mtdblock5: unrecognised disk label
Error: /dev/mtdblock4: unrecognised disk label
Error: /dev/mtdblock3: unrecognised disk label
Error: /dev/mtdblock2: unrecognised disk label
Error: /dev/mtdblock1: unrecognised disk label
Error: /dev/mtdblock0: unrecognised disk label
humax#
 
I was optimistic because it worked fine under usb, and still I think it will work internally with some further twiddling...

I did a simple ext3 format from a linux pc so surely this should work for anyone as an external 4tb usb drive..

the 4tb drive has worked well for 6 months so far with direct recording to it. its keeps quite cool..

anyway this is all fun for me, I like to do difficult things and learn.
 
af123 said:
gfdisk -l /dev/sda

?
Click to expand...


same
humax# gfdisk -l /dev/sda
Error: /dev/mtdblock6: unrecognised disk label
Error: /dev/mtdblock5: unrecognised disk label
Error: /dev/mtdblock4: unrecognised disk label
Error: /dev/mtdblock3: unrecognised disk label
Error: /dev/mtdblock2: unrecognised disk label
Error: /dev/mtdblock1: unrecognised disk label
Error: /dev/mtdblock0: unrecognised disk label
 
sohlinux said:
Nope its HDR, I had the usb mounted in the internal drive folder so it can record direct to the usb, also saves going back and forth between drives with the blue button..
Click to expand...
Could you explain how you got this to work, please. As far as I know no one has managed to enable direct recording onto an external drive on a HDR-FOX before.
As to why your 4TB drive is OK when connected by USB, all I can think of is the controller hardware (SATA to USB bridge) that is part of the external drive apparatus.
 
I have only one idea how that could work. Single recordings go to the /Media/My Video folder whether you like it or not, and series recordings go to a specific named folder under My Video. By default the folder name is set up as the name of the series, but could be altered by CF to "usb-disk" (or whatever alternative name has been chosen for the mount) - which might achieve recording to the external drive for series, but not single recordings, and the recordings would always be to the root of the external drive.

I'm sorry to say this, but sohlinux is pretty sparse with the details of how he has done these things, as if to tease.
 
Black Hole said:
I have only one idea how that could work. Single recordings go to the /Media/My Video folder whether you like it or not, and series recordings go to a specific named folder under My Video. By default the folder name is set up as the name of the series, but could be altered by CF to "usb-disk" (or whatever alternative name has been chosen for the mount) - which might achieve recording to the external drive for series, but not single recordings, and the recordings would always be to the root of the external drive.

I'm sorry to say this, but sohlinux is pretty sparse with the details of how he has done these things, as if to tease.
Click to expand...

I can assure you there is no teasing going on, I am happy to share anything I know but I cannot remember how it was done but I got the info from this forum, your right some series linked programs record direct to the usb drive where other programs go direct to the internal drive, maybe if the series link folder was moved from the internal drive to the usb then the next series link went to the usb automatically because the folder existed?. this is a bit of a mystery to me. and now I formatted the drive to try to put it internally so I cant see exactly how it was mounted, if it doesnt work internally I will reformat it and try to mount it again in the my video folder and tell you guys how I did it.
 
I cannot think of any way for you to have done this other than to use the WebIF to edit the target folder for every series recording you wanted to send to the external drive, which would have to be "usb-disk" unless you had also taken measures to name it something else. I'm sure you would have remembered doing those steps!

You didn't get instructions for recording to the external drive from the forum, AFAICR there have been no details and it has been regarded as a difficult area. As with the 4TB issue, it appears you have read a little, ignored the technical info, put two and two together and made 7, and somehow got lucky. If you can't say exactly what you did, it might not be repeatable.
 
Black Hole said:
I cannot think of any way for you to have done this other than to use the WebIF to edit the target folder for every series recording you wanted to send to the external drive, which would have to be "usb-disk" unless you had also taken measures to name it something else. I'm sure you would have remembered doing those steps!

You didn't get instructions for recording to the external drive from the forum, AFAICR there have been no details and it has been regarded as a difficult area. As with the 4TB issue, it appears you have read a little, ignored the technical info, put two and two together and made 7, and somehow got lucky. If you can't say exactly what you did, it might not be repeatable.
Click to expand...


if you move a series linked folder from the internal drive to the usb drive and put a link back to my videos folder it will continue to record to the same folder, just looking back at some old posts it looks like mount --bind did the job, I also tried the ln command which for some reason only shows up as a link if viewed from the command line or viewed via ftp, the link doesn't show on the humax menu for some reason when using ln command.

as for the 4tb it was a simple ext3 format and it works. you'll need to be using a linux kernel which supports large drives on the pc you are using to format the drive. also make sure the sata to usb converter is usb3 otherwise it shows the drive as max 2tb.

as for the 4tb working internally I may try to get it working in my spare time. its fun to try.
 
Details at last! Thanks. In summary you used Telnet jiggery-pokery to play around with the file system for every series you wanted to record direct to external drive (mounted into the My Video folder).

I'm thinking it would be possible to automate this, and thus provide and easy route to expanding the HDR-FOX recording space to an external drive.
 
Black Hole said:
Details at last! Thanks. In summary you used Telnet jiggery-pokery to play around with the file system for every series you wanted to record direct to external drive (mounted into the My Video folder).

I'm thinking it would be possible to automate this, and thus provide and easy route to expanding the HDR-FOX recording space to an external drive.
Click to expand...
Sweeper could trivially be extended to support this. ('moveandlinkback' action)
 
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