Hi All, I've been using the Aura 2TB for the past year and it's now out of warrenty. I mention this because I've been having a few niggles lately. In the first few months of use I was forced to do a full disk format owing to increasing freezes and complete crashes. Things improved but alas they are back now and the symptoms look like the failing disk I had in my FoxT2. Now that lasted 20 years with three disk upgrades, so I thought I would give the Aura a try.
I removed the one warranty seal and removed the four screws in the bottom case shell. The top comes off easily with no hidden clips, just a slight wiggle required. Inside I find a mostly screened and covered circuit board, heat sink, and a 2.5 inch video hdd from Seagate. I checked the Seagate website for details and it's for security camera use which is what you would expect. I checked amazon and it was available for £45 but on the same page for £65 was a Barracuda also for security system usage but with a higher spec. So I've sent for that and will fit it when it gets here. Wish me luck.
In the meantime I used a SATA to USB3 adaptor to connect the old drive to my Ubuntu PC and see that I could find. The SMART info says 120,000,000 read errors in the past 200 days. That doesn't sound that "smart" to me and I'd be interested o hear your thoughts on that. I did an FSCK (Unix Disk Check and Repair) and that said it has fixed some items and it was now clean, meaning I can keep this as a spare. Also I investigated the disk partitioning and unlike the three EXT2's on my T2, the Aura only has 1 EXT3 partition. Much simpler. Once mounted the disk layout is laid bare. Looks to be like a PC home directory with folders for Docs, Movies, Music, Pics etc, along with Downloads and Android. In downloads there is a crash_reports folder containing several files with create times aligned with yesterdays crashes. I'll look into those later, but they look like timeouts not correctly processed. If you descend into the Android folder [data/com.humaxdigital.corona.freeview/files/recordings/timeshift] you find the chunk files for the pause and rewind of live view. You will also see a folder for each series you have recorded. So I hope you find this useful and I'll post again when I install the new disk soon.
Update: New Barracuda fitted okay. Some interesting startup events I was not expecting. Those who have played with the T2 will remember there were three partitions on the disk; small one for schedule and guide details, medium one for 2 hour circular buffer, large one for recorded programs. When I started the Aura, first up it complained it didn't support for drive format (i'm guessing it was some general format and not EXT4. So it directed me for reformat the disk which took about 3 to 4 minutes (so not a full format then for a 2TB disk). I saw the guide was already poputated and it didn't ask me to auto-tune the channels. Obviously that is stored in some internal memory. Then I went to the schedule to set something up, but it still had my last test schedule I setup before I removed the old disk! So that is in memory too. I cannot remember if this was done on the T" or if it was a series of (unix term) crontab entries in a file? Anyone else remember how this was done? Anyway, I deleted the old schedules and set up three concurrent ones to load the system all in HD. Then I select another HD channel and proceeded to watch a live transmission so I could text pause rewind and play. I don't know if it was my imagination, but all operations just seemed smoother and more snappy. The jump between 32x rewind and play was just instantaneous, no breakup of sound or picture and the juncture it just played. It's been on now tor 2 days and nights and it has not crashed or buffered at all in that time (at least when I was awake!). So all in all a good replacement experience. If anyone else want's to try this search for this on Amazon:
Now to clear up a few other points, yes 20 years was a slight exaggeration, mainly due to the book number on the back of the quick start guide looking like 2007. Doh! I can't find the bill for the T2 but I have one for the FoxSat box dated 2009 so it's probably of similar vintage.
Yes Chunk files still exist on the Aura and are mostly the same size except when switching channels truncate a file at the end of transmission. They appear to be encrypted but that may be because I tend to watch only HD which are always encrypted. If you copy the encrypted files from the old drive to the new one, you can still play them on the new disk because the encryption key is located on the motherboard.
That's about it so I'll leave you in peace now unless it fails again...
I removed the one warranty seal and removed the four screws in the bottom case shell. The top comes off easily with no hidden clips, just a slight wiggle required. Inside I find a mostly screened and covered circuit board, heat sink, and a 2.5 inch video hdd from Seagate. I checked the Seagate website for details and it's for security camera use which is what you would expect. I checked amazon and it was available for £45 but on the same page for £65 was a Barracuda also for security system usage but with a higher spec. So I've sent for that and will fit it when it gets here. Wish me luck.
In the meantime I used a SATA to USB3 adaptor to connect the old drive to my Ubuntu PC and see that I could find. The SMART info says 120,000,000 read errors in the past 200 days. That doesn't sound that "smart" to me and I'd be interested o hear your thoughts on that. I did an FSCK (Unix Disk Check and Repair) and that said it has fixed some items and it was now clean, meaning I can keep this as a spare. Also I investigated the disk partitioning and unlike the three EXT2's on my T2, the Aura only has 1 EXT3 partition. Much simpler. Once mounted the disk layout is laid bare. Looks to be like a PC home directory with folders for Docs, Movies, Music, Pics etc, along with Downloads and Android. In downloads there is a crash_reports folder containing several files with create times aligned with yesterdays crashes. I'll look into those later, but they look like timeouts not correctly processed. If you descend into the Android folder [data/com.humaxdigital.corona.freeview/files/recordings/timeshift] you find the chunk files for the pause and rewind of live view. You will also see a folder for each series you have recorded. So I hope you find this useful and I'll post again when I install the new disk soon.
Update: New Barracuda fitted okay. Some interesting startup events I was not expecting. Those who have played with the T2 will remember there were three partitions on the disk; small one for schedule and guide details, medium one for 2 hour circular buffer, large one for recorded programs. When I started the Aura, first up it complained it didn't support for drive format (i'm guessing it was some general format and not EXT4. So it directed me for reformat the disk which took about 3 to 4 minutes (so not a full format then for a 2TB disk). I saw the guide was already poputated and it didn't ask me to auto-tune the channels. Obviously that is stored in some internal memory. Then I went to the schedule to set something up, but it still had my last test schedule I setup before I removed the old disk! So that is in memory too. I cannot remember if this was done on the T" or if it was a series of (unix term) crontab entries in a file? Anyone else remember how this was done? Anyway, I deleted the old schedules and set up three concurrent ones to load the system all in HD. Then I select another HD channel and proceeded to watch a live transmission so I could text pause rewind and play. I don't know if it was my imagination, but all operations just seemed smoother and more snappy. The jump between 32x rewind and play was just instantaneous, no breakup of sound or picture and the juncture it just played. It's been on now tor 2 days and nights and it has not crashed or buffered at all in that time (at least when I was awake!). So all in all a good replacement experience. If anyone else want's to try this search for this on Amazon:
Seagate BarraCuda 2 TB Internal Hard Drive HDD – 2.5 Inch SATA 6 Gb/s 5400 RPM 128 MB Cache for PC Laptop (ST2000LM015)
If you look up the model number (STxxxx above) on the Seagate website it is another video security drive just higher speck. Hope that helpsNow to clear up a few other points, yes 20 years was a slight exaggeration, mainly due to the book number on the back of the quick start guide looking like 2007. Doh! I can't find the bill for the T2 but I have one for the FoxSat box dated 2009 so it's probably of similar vintage.
Yes Chunk files still exist on the Aura and are mostly the same size except when switching channels truncate a file at the end of transmission. They appear to be encrypted but that may be because I tend to watch only HD which are always encrypted. If you copy the encrypted files from the old drive to the new one, you can still play them on the new disk because the encryption key is located on the motherboard.
That's about it so I'll leave you in peace now unless it fails again...
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