Adding a large external disk

cloud9

Member
So I bought an external 2TB disk to free up some space on the main disk. I gather I need to format it to ext3 as the humax only does small NTFS partitions. So I went though af123's upgrade wiki to get the idea, but since this is an external drive and not a replacement drive (and I don;t do much linux admin) I just wanted to check before I did too much.
So currently it shows as below.
humax# gfdisk -l

Disk /dev/sda: 2000 GB, 2000396321280 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 243201 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 1 243202 1953520033 7 HPFS/NTFS
Warning: Partition 1 does not end on cylinder boundary.

Disk /dev/sdb: 500 GB, 500105249280 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 60801 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sdb1 1 131 1052226 83 Linux
/dev/sdb2 132 59495 476833297 83 Linux
/dev/sdb3 59496 60801 10482412 83 Linux
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


I was a little surprised to see the external drive as sda1 and the internal one as sdb, but assume that is fine.
Are the errors anything to worry about (and where are they from - OK I could remove the new drive and check whether they are still there, but that will have to wait as I can;t do that now).

So I presume I just need a single partition and based ont he wiki I am thinking it is
mkfs.ext3 -m 0 -O sparse_super -T largefile /dev/sda1
But I am not sure I understood the wiki well enough as I don;t see where all "key properties:" and changes mentioned actually get specified.

Anyway, any help in reassuring me. I don;t want to do anything disaterous to the main disk and may only get very limited time to set up the new disk.

TIA.
 
You need to make sure the start sector is divisible by 8 (currently shows as 1) as I presume it's an advanced format drive. Otherwise it looks OK.
 
It's currently showing cylinders, not sectors. Try 'gfdisk -ul /dev/sda' to see what the start sector is
 
Disk /dev/sda1: 2000 GB, 2000396321280 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 243201 cylinders, total 3907024065 sectors
Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1p1 0 3907027115 1953520033 83 Linux
Warning: Partition 1 does not end on cylinder boundary.
humax#
 
Sorry.

Disk /dev/sda: 2000 GB, 2000396321280 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 243201 cylinders, total 3907024065 sectors
Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 2048 3907029163 1953520033 7 HPFS/NTFS
Warning: Partition 1 does not end on cylinder boundary.
humax#

However I did think there was some limitation on NTFS. If that's not true then I don't have to do ext3 unless there is some benefit.

On my tablet so finding refs harder
 
Aha, I think I may be thinking of this -


With the standard firmware a HDR FOX T2 will read NTFS volumes but not write to them. The Custom Firmware add on allows write operations to NTFS and also lets you copy files directly to a PC.

So I guess I could us NTFS, any reason to change it?
 
Which is not available at the moment is it? I get "oops could not find wiki.hummy.TV". Presumably as hummy.TV is still down.
 
Which is not available at the moment is it? I get "oops could not find wiki.hummy.TV". Presumably as hummy.TV is still down.
The hummy.tv and wiki.hummy.tv sites had a problem yesterday with DNS servers, try the alternative link HERE
hummy.tv has been working OK on its normal address since yesterday evening, and the wiki link at the top of the forum is also working OK. Anyone still having problems accessing them perhaps needs to clear their browser cache.
 
hummy.tv has been working OK on its normal address since yesterday evening, and the wiki link at the top of the forum is also working OK. Anyone still having problems accessing them perhaps needs to clear their browser cache.
It depends on your DNS. You cannot categorically say it is fixed. It certainly ain't fixed here, and it's nothing to do with browser caches.
I get "server fail" on all four variants of the *.*.hummy.tv addresses I've tried.
 
Many thanks for the alt wiki link. Of course now the main links works too. Propagation delays presumably.

So it was the 4G limit I was thinking of which sounded worth avoiding. So presumably I should try to mkfs command now.
 
hummy.tv has been working OK on its normal address since yesterday evening, and the wiki link at the top of the forum is also working OK. Anyone still having problems accessing them perhaps needs to clear their browser cache.
The primary name server was fixed yesterday around 11:00, I think. It was setup with a time to live of 48 hours so all DNS caches should have updated by 11:00 tomorrow.

FWIW the cache I am using still has 4920 seconds left before it expires:
Code:
;; QUESTION SECTION:
;hummy.tv.                      IN      NS

;; ANSWER SECTION:
hummy.tv.               4920    IN      NS      ns1.domainhasexpired.com.
hummy.tv.               4920    IN      NS      ns2.domainhasexpired.com.

;; ADDITIONAL SECTION:
ns1.domainhasexpired.com. 12954 IN      A       109.68.33.62
ns2.domainhasexpired.com. 12954 IN      A       109.68.33.63
 
Sorry.

Disk /dev/sda: 2000 GB, 2000396321280 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 243201 cylinders, total 3907024065 sectors
Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 2048 3907029163 1953520033 7 HPFS/NTFS
Warning: Partition 1 does not end on cylinder boundary.
That partition is properly aligned so would be good for either EXT3 or NTFS (EXT3 uses a 4096 byte block size by default and NTFS has a default cluster size of 4096 bytes - both need aligned partitions for best performance.)
 
Yes, many thanks af123.

Sorry for the confusion in #14 & #15, I was posting too quickly and didn't explain myself well. So just to clarify - the FAT32 has a 4G limit which is what I was remembering in the original post as the NTFS problem. The problem with NTFS is that it can only be read, not written to (unless you use CFW and add ntfs-3g).

So I thought I would test the external drive as-is , .e. the preformatted NTFS. I have added the ntfs-3g package and after leaving it overnight (reboot presumably but it was recording so I couldn't do that manually), it now allows me to move files across to the external drive - hurrah. It was a 4.6G film in this case using the opt+ button. Unfortunately when I try to play them it gives an error saying it cannot play that format or something similar.

Obviously if I can't play them straight from the external disk there is no point archiving there. So have I misunderstood what is possible, or made some other mistake in moving, testing. Or would ext3 make a difference to NTFS relating to this (I can't see how).
 
Was the file you moved/copied an SD or HD recording.
If the latter you need to make sure that the "enc" flag is cleared first (auto-unprotect or Foxy). Otherwise it won't be decrypted in the copy/move.
This applies to Humax copy/move function. If you use other copy/move routes then different rules apply.
 
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