Custom Firmware Weirdness. Absolutely stumped.

[ClemFandango]

I picked up a Foxsat HDR a few days ago with a 500gb hard drive. Flashed Raydon's firmware no problem. Everything working nicely so decided to order a new WD Purple 1TB drive to upgrade.

That drive came today so I pulled the 500gb Pipeline drive and installed the new one. Booted the box and it recognised the drive and formatted accordingly. Rebooted and everything working ok.

I went to the EPG and noticed all the channels i'd previously hidden had returned and I figured, rightly or wrongly, that i'd need to re-flash the custom firmware so I did.

I rebooted and the box no longer detected my new hard drive. I put the pipeline back in and it recognised it fine, but it wouldn't recognise the new one.

I eventually figured out that the Foxsat doesn't recognise NTFS so I connected the Purple drive to my PC and reformatted it to FAT32. I flashed the box back to the stock firmware and re-installed the drive and bingo!, the drive was detected and re-formatted accordingly and everything worked again.

But ..

I then re-flashed back to the custom firmware (4.1.3) and once again, my hard drive was no longer detected !

I'm absolutely stumped so I'd be very, very grateful for any bright ideas. Thankyou.

 

[Black Hole]

I went to the EPG and noticed all the channels i'd previously hidden had returned and I figured, rightly or wrongly, that i'd need to re-flash the custom firmware so I did.

Wrongly. An ill-informed knee-jerk reaction which triggered an avalanche of further ill-informed knee-jerk reactions, no doubt due to rushing at the end of the day.

I eventually figured out that the Foxsat doesn't recognise NTFS so I connected the Purple drive to my PC and reformatted it to FAT32. I flashed the box back to the stock firmware and re-installed the drive and bingo!, the drive was detected and re-formatted accordingly and everything worked again.

This can't be an NTFS thing, unless you've left some critical information out of your story. You said you installed the new HDD and the Foxsat formatted it, so that would have been to Ext3. How do you think it could have gone back to NTFS?

You need to take it back to baseline and start again, without the diving down rabbit holes. Return to stock firmware, reinstall the 500GB Pipeline, make sure everything works. Cool head on, not midnight working. Install CF, make sure everything works. Don't worry about side issues such as it forgetting hidden services, deal with that later.

Then you can reinstall the WD. If the drive is detected and the format isn't correct, you will be given the option to format it. Even if the format is suitable, you can force a format through the Foxsat menus. If the drive is not detected, that's a problem with the drive or the drive interface... not the firmware!

 

[ClemFandango]

Thankyou. I do recognise now that It was clearly the wrong move.

What I probably didn't mention, which I apologise for, is that one thing I tried in one of those rabbit holes was pulling the WD Purple drive and attaching it to my PC so I could wipe the drive and start again. At the time, I was telling myself that it had to be reformatted to NTFS because it was a 1TB drive.

But you're right though, and I should know that as well because starting from scratch and being methodical is always the way to go.

 

[ClemFandango]

Right, this is what I've done so far.

Flashed back to stock firmware and reinstalled the original drive. Did a factory reset and everything was fine. Drive was detected and could be formatted correctly via the menu option. Unit worked without an issue.

Flashed to the custom firmware, still with the original drive. Drive still detected and I reformatted it again without a problem. Unit still worked.

I connected the WD Purple drive to my PC, deleted all the partitions and recreated one single "Unformatted" one using the AOMEI partition manager software.

Installed the drive into the unit, turned it on and the drive was subsequently not detected again. No option to do anything in the menu.

So keeping the WD Purple drive in the unit, I flashed back to stock firmware. Turned it on and the drive was detected and formatted. I went to the menu option and did a full reformat which worked. Unit is currently working without an issue and the WD Purple drive is detected correctly with the correct size stats.

So I'm about to flash back to the custom firmware and I'm pretty convinced it's just going to "lose" the drive again, but we'll see. If it does then I'm just going to turn it off and come back to it later as it's literally giving me a headache.

 

[prpr]

I'm about to flash back to the custom firmware and I'm pretty convinced it's just going to "lose" the drive again

How does that square with this:

decided to order a new WD Purple 1TB drive to upgrade.

That drive came today so I pulled the 500gb Pipeline drive and installed the new one. Booted the box and it recognised the drive and formatted accordingly.

If I read it correctly (and you wrote it correctly), it did work once, so ought to again.
Forget all that stuff about partitions, NTFS, FAT32 and whatever. It is mostly irrelevant. The Foxsat will set up whatever partitioning and formatting (filesystem creation) is required.

What, exactly, do you mean by "was no longer detected". Where are you looking?

 

[MartinLiddle]

So I'm about to flash back to the custom firmware and I'm pretty convinced it's just going to "lose" the drive again, but we'll see. If it does then I'm just going to turn it off and come back to it later as it's literally giving me a headache.

Two possibilities occur to me:

Have you reduced the SATA speed from SATA III to SATA II? I think there have been reports that the FOXSAT HDR can have issues with SATA III drives.

It might be a driver issue in the kernel for the custom firmware.

 

[ClemFandango]

How does that square with this:

If I read it correctly (and you wrote it correctly), it did work once, so ought to again.
Forget all that stuff about partitions, NTFS, FAT32 and whatever. It is mostly irrelevant. The Foxsat will set up whatever partitioning and formatting (filesystem creation) is required.

What, exactly, do you mean by "was no longer detected". Where are you looking?

You did read correctly. When I started this whole affair, I had the custom firmware already installed and working on the box with the 500gb Seagate Pipeline drive it came with when I bought it. Everything worked without a problem. I picked up the 1TB drive yesterday and when I unpacked it and installed it into the box, it was detected and formatted correctly.

The one "mistake" I subsequently made was to reflash the custom firmware onto the box because I thought, clearly incorrectly, that replacing the hard drive had reverted the box back to stock firmware because my previously hidden channels had re-appeared.

When I rebooted after re-flashing, the message came up on the screen that the Hard Drive was not detected.

That's when everything else happened.

Two possibilities occur to me:

Have you reduced the SATA speed from SATA III to SATA II? I think there have been reports that the FOXSAT HDR can have issues with SATA III drives.

It might be a driver issue in the kernel for the custom firmware.

The more I think about it as i write this reply, the more I'm wondering if this could well be the issue. I tried flashing back to the stock firmware again and i reattached the WD Purple drive to my PC and deleted all of the partitions. I recreated a new partition and set it as "Unformatted".

When I installed it back into the Humax, it was again detected correctly and reformatted accordingly. To double check, I went into the menu and forced a reformat that way and it still worked fine.

I powered the box down for five minutes and when I powered it back up, it had once again "lost" the hard drive and i got the popup message that the hard drive wasn't detected.

So i'm wondering if I need to buy some hard drive jumpers. Part of me wants to just give up and forget it but that other part of me that can't leave a problem unsolved wants to keep going

 

[bottletop]

....So i'm wondering if I need to buy some hard drive jumpers. Part of me wants to just give up and forget it but that other part of me that can't leave a problem unsolved wants to keep going

I know nothing about the FOXSAT, but note that you're having issues with this new drive on the unit. Why not just try to see if the new drive is compatible with the unit first? Eg blank or remove the formatting on the new WD purple drive, then attach it to the unit. Try formatting drive in the unit and using it for a day or two as it is (ie just as a normal FOXSAT with the only change being the new drive). Try a few reboots and power downs, including powering down from the plug.
The test may give you a clue on how reliable the unit behaves with the new drive.

 

[ClemFandango]

I know nothing about the FOXSAT, but note that you're having issues with this new drive on the unit. Why not just try to see if the new drive is compatible with the unit first? Eg blank or remove the formatting on the new WD purple drive, then attach it to the unit. Try formatting drive in the unit and using it for a day or two as it is (ie just as a normal FOXSAT with the only change being the new drive). Try a few reboots and power downs, including powering down from the plug.
The test may give you a clue on how reliable the unit behaves with the new drive.

I did that though - I used a partition manager to set the drive as "Unformatted" and it was detected as such by the stock firmware and formatted properly.

When I powered the box down for just over 5 minutes, I powered it back on and the drive was subsequently not detected by the box.

 

[bottletop]

I did that though - I used a partition manager to set the drive as "Unformatted" and it was detected as such by the stock firmware and formatted properly.

When I powered the box down for just over 5 minutes, I powered it back on and the drive was subsequently not detected by the box.

So that means the new WD drive is not compatible with your FOXSAT. in which case , try @MartinLiddle 's suggestion of limiting the SATA to SATAII speed.

Information and Support for Serial ATA, EIDE, SSD Drives Jumper Settings

Find detailed answers to your support questions for your Western Digital, SanDisk, WD_BLACK, or WD storage product.

support-en.wd.com

Suggests jumper on pins 5-6 (although I've not tried it myself). Make sure it behaves in stable manner for a few days and/or reboots with the stock firmware before taking the next step.

 

[ClemFandango]

So that means the new WD drive is not compatible with your FOXSAT. in which case , try @MartinLiddle 's suggestion of limiting the SATA to SATAII speed.

Information and Support for Serial ATA, EIDE, SSD Drives Jumper Settings

Find detailed answers to your support questions for your Western Digital, SanDisk, WD_BLACK, or WD storage product.

support-en.wd.com

Suggests jumper on pins 5-6 (although I've not tried it myself)

It works fine with the stock firmware, or at least until I power the unit down for 5 minutes and power it back on again.

 

[bottletop]

There may be a mis-understanding somewhere as I did a small edit.

It works fine with the stock firmware, or at least until I power the unit down for 5 minutes and power it back on again.

...Suggests jumper on pins 5-6 (although I've not tried it myself). Make sure it behaves in stable manner for a few days and/or reboots with the stock firmware before taking the next step.

As far as I can tell your new drive does not work well with the unit - even on stock firmware, because it may get lost after a reboot.
I am suggesting you check and make sure it works 100% of the time on stock firmware before taking next steps.

 

[bottletop]

As an alternative, you could your try another hard drive (rather than the original drive or the new WD purple) with the standard firmware.
Use the unit to format this drive. Test it across many reboots, many hours and as many functions as possible. At least this will confirm that it'll work with with non original drive. After that you could to try and get it to work with the WD purple 100% of the time.

 

[prpr]

It works fine with the stock firmware, or at least until I power the unit down for 5 minutes and power it back on again.

It doesn't work 'fine' then.
You do need to limit the speed, as has already been suggested - two of the ones I look after with 500GB Pipeline drives have a jumper to slug to 1.5 Gb/s. The last time I replaced a drive, I had to put a jumper on it.

 

[bottletop]

It doesn't work 'fine' then.
You do need to limit the speed, as has already been suggested - two of the ones I look after with 500GB Pipeline drives have a jumper to slug to 1.5 Gb/s. The last time I replaced a drive, I had to put a jumper on it.

So does that mean to get the correct type of drive for the Foxsat-HDR OP should get either -

• SATA I drive
• or SATA II drive with jumpers set to SATA I

Also OP should not use a WD SATA III drive as it may not have jumper setting to downgrade to SATA I?
https://zedt.eu/tech/hardware/western-digital-hard-drives-jumper-settings/

Information and Support for Serial ATA, EIDE, SSD Drives Jumper Settings

Find detailed answers to your support questions for your Western Digital, SanDisk, WD_BLACK, or WD storage product.

support-en.wd.com

That's assuming

• SATA I - 1.5 Gb/s
• SATA II - 3.0 Gb/s
• SATA III - 6.0 Gb/s

 

[Rodders53]

OP was told to do this jumper setting on AVForums... but has gone <off in a huff> it seems

Humax Foxsat HDR - Raydon's Custom Firmware Weirdness

This is rather puzzling. I picked up a cheap Foxsat box a few days ago with a 500gb HDD. Flashed Raydon's Firmware (4.1.3) without an issue. Everything working. Decided I'd upgrade the HDD to a 1TB drive as I wanted to keep using the box so ordered a new 1TB Western Digital Purple drive...

www.avforums.com

 

[RichFX]

This is very interesting. I did not realise the SATA might be too fast for the Hummy.
On my T2 the Seagate ST2000DMZ08 has been working just fine, except the Time Shift function stopped after we had a mains glitch.
The Seagate apparently also uses "shingling" which is a major problem for rapid rewrite which might be another problem/redherring.
I'm transferring everything off it right now so as to be able to do a reformat and see if it wakes up the Time Shift. If it works again, but soon goes wrong again for the Time Shift I'll add the 1.5GHz jumper as mentioned earlier in this thread.
A picture of where the jumper goes on this HDD.

 

[Rodders53]

This is very interesting. I did not realise the SATA might be too fast for the Hummy.

AIUI
It's not so much the raw HDD speed as that the Foxsat-HDR is too busy doing other things during a boot to 'see' the disk in time, so 'no disk found' message.

Sometimes, though it can and does find it.
Until power down.
Then it's a chance encounter (or not).

NB HDR-Fox-T2 uses Sata II - 3Gb/s
Foxsat-HDR is Sata I -1.5Gb/s

You may want to check with the -T2 threads on whether the link down to sata I would be advisable in your case?
Googling it suggests that Sata III drives are backward compatible with Sata II interfaces?
YMMV and others here may have better understanding than I?

 

[MartinLiddle]

This is very interesting. I did not realise the SATA might be too fast for the Hummy.
On my T2 the Seagate ST2000DMZ08 has been working just fine, except the Time Shift function stopped after we had a mains glitch.

I don't think you should assume that what applies for a FOXSAT is also true for an HDR-FOX T2. I have never seen anybody suggest using a slower SATA speed with an HDR-FOX T2.
Your problem will be that the buffer for time shift has become corrupted. I would start by running fix-disk and if that doesn't fix it then delete the buffer.

 

[RichFX]

Thanks both for the advice. It makes good sense.

I didn't know the T2 was Sata II, I guess it should be able to auto negotiate with the Sata III drive.
Fortunately there was not to much on the new HDD so a reformat was viable. It has worked and time can be shifted again.

I guess if it goes wrong in the future in the future when its fuller I'll need to install the custom firmware to have access to fix-disk.
For now I'll wait until it breaks again before fixing it.

Sorry for edging into someone else's topic, the link idea seemed worth exploring.