Peso
Member
Hello everyone. I got the titled HDD for my main HDR for Christmas. I thought I’d tell the story of how it went in case it helps anyone else.
The short version is yes it works in a Foxsat HDR with all space available. But might want running in.
This is the longer version for those with a cup of tea to sip. It all starts in January….
I run 3 HDR’s. One plugged into the telly with a WD AV 500GB HDD I put into it full of recordings for the kids. Two more in an upstairs cupboard accessed by the TV HDR via the NAS Mount package. One of the upstairs ones has all the programs for the wife and myself (the one that needs making bigger from an original 500GB Seagate), the other an original 320 drived one for backups.
With enough external HDD caddies to hand I put the old and new drives in caddies and used Easeus Disk Copy 2.3 to clone the old drive onto the new. Then used gparted to alter the size of the partitions 3 and 4 (Video and Photo) to my required sizes.
Popped the new drive into the HDR and turned it on. Up it fired and everything worked. All the old recordings were there, the CFW was there with all settings as before, as I expected. Life is good.
Now the fun started. I’m writing this in April so the order of things is a little hazy. This cupboard bound HDR is set to turn on at 07:00 and off at 00:30.
What I started experiencing from day one was…
Sometimes not running Housekeeping at 03:00 (as reported by the Remote Scheduling Portal).
Sometimes the HDR booted at 7, but didn’t see the HDD.
Sometimes the HDR didn’t boot at 7 at all.
Emphasis here on sometimes. Over 7 days I might get 2-4 housekeepings and 3-4 7am boots without HDD or no boot at all. If no boot at all a manual start might no get the HDD connect first time, but always second time.
My initial suspicion was power or sata interface speed. Even if the HDD was not detected you could hear and feel it spinning. So there was power getting to it. All cable pulled and replugged. Then out with the drive and into a caddy, checked the drive for errors, nothing. Sata speed is supposedly auto detected on this, no jumpering required to 1.5 Gb/s. Though it was 4 jumper pins. The manual touts its autodetect ability though does say the sata speed can be limited by some command software. Despite a LOT a googling I could find no software or any talk about how this software control of the drive could be achieved. I did try all possible jumper variations. I had some program that tells what sata speed a drive is talking. No matter where I stuck a jumper it was always 6 Gb/s.
Stuck it back in the HDR. If the drive is detected at boot it works fine until you put it into standby then play roulette with it fully restarting.
I’ve always used Power Saving In Standby (no clock when turned off) found in the Humax menu Settings→Other, to save the planet. Tried turning it off. As well as the clock staying on it keeps the satellite pass through on and the SCART pass through (anyone under 30 had better google SCART, the HDMI of its day).
This did seem to improve the successful startup rate. I reasoned the power draw of the drive at the moment of boot, along with all the other system requirements, was sometimes too much resulting in the HDR wait for the HDD to announce itself coming a millisecond or two too late. With the satellite feed and SCARTs already running was this leaving more power for the HDD’s wakeup?
I left it set like this and was getting 4-5 housekeepings a week and 4-5 successful starts at 7am. The benefit of the increased storage outweighed having to manually turn on the box and off a couple of times a week. If we ever go on holiday again (Covid if you’re reading this in 2030 or beyond) I can set duplicate recordings on one of the other two HDR’s that start reliably. I was content with this fudge fix.
That was the middle of January, fast forward to the beginning of March. It suddenly dawned on me I hadn’t had to manually boot the HDR for ages. So made a mental note to pay attention to how it was each morning for a week. It never missed a housekeep and only failed a 7am boot once, seeing the HDD first time I booted it. I set it back to Power Saving In Standby, that was a week and a half ago and it hasn’t missed any start since.
Theories? I have one. It just so happened in March we bought a new car. Well 3 years old but new to us. Like any self respecting man and husband the first thing I did when I knew the car was coming was find the manual online and read it cover to cover, so I know how the car works. I even read the bits about if the car was brand new. It said about the first 500 miles and I quote “All moving parts have to adapt themselves to each other”. Having recently read this then thinking about the HDR I wonder if the HDD experiences something similar. Slightly more resistance in parts that rub for the first X hours. I have read before somewhere the suggestion that the HDR power supply provides just enough power for the job. Maybe at some specific rest position the effort to start this drive was more than the HDR could manage, hence the intermittent nature of the drive not being seen or the box just no bothering.
So a Seagate ST2000VM003 works in a Foxsat HDR. But might want running in!!
The short version is yes it works in a Foxsat HDR with all space available. But might want running in.
This is the longer version for those with a cup of tea to sip. It all starts in January….
I run 3 HDR’s. One plugged into the telly with a WD AV 500GB HDD I put into it full of recordings for the kids. Two more in an upstairs cupboard accessed by the TV HDR via the NAS Mount package. One of the upstairs ones has all the programs for the wife and myself (the one that needs making bigger from an original 500GB Seagate), the other an original 320 drived one for backups.
With enough external HDD caddies to hand I put the old and new drives in caddies and used Easeus Disk Copy 2.3 to clone the old drive onto the new. Then used gparted to alter the size of the partitions 3 and 4 (Video and Photo) to my required sizes.
Popped the new drive into the HDR and turned it on. Up it fired and everything worked. All the old recordings were there, the CFW was there with all settings as before, as I expected. Life is good.
Now the fun started. I’m writing this in April so the order of things is a little hazy. This cupboard bound HDR is set to turn on at 07:00 and off at 00:30.
What I started experiencing from day one was…
Sometimes not running Housekeeping at 03:00 (as reported by the Remote Scheduling Portal).
Sometimes the HDR booted at 7, but didn’t see the HDD.
Sometimes the HDR didn’t boot at 7 at all.
Emphasis here on sometimes. Over 7 days I might get 2-4 housekeepings and 3-4 7am boots without HDD or no boot at all. If no boot at all a manual start might no get the HDD connect first time, but always second time.
My initial suspicion was power or sata interface speed. Even if the HDD was not detected you could hear and feel it spinning. So there was power getting to it. All cable pulled and replugged. Then out with the drive and into a caddy, checked the drive for errors, nothing. Sata speed is supposedly auto detected on this, no jumpering required to 1.5 Gb/s. Though it was 4 jumper pins. The manual touts its autodetect ability though does say the sata speed can be limited by some command software. Despite a LOT a googling I could find no software or any talk about how this software control of the drive could be achieved. I did try all possible jumper variations. I had some program that tells what sata speed a drive is talking. No matter where I stuck a jumper it was always 6 Gb/s.
Stuck it back in the HDR. If the drive is detected at boot it works fine until you put it into standby then play roulette with it fully restarting.
I’ve always used Power Saving In Standby (no clock when turned off) found in the Humax menu Settings→Other, to save the planet. Tried turning it off. As well as the clock staying on it keeps the satellite pass through on and the SCART pass through (anyone under 30 had better google SCART, the HDMI of its day).
This did seem to improve the successful startup rate. I reasoned the power draw of the drive at the moment of boot, along with all the other system requirements, was sometimes too much resulting in the HDR wait for the HDD to announce itself coming a millisecond or two too late. With the satellite feed and SCARTs already running was this leaving more power for the HDD’s wakeup?
I left it set like this and was getting 4-5 housekeepings a week and 4-5 successful starts at 7am. The benefit of the increased storage outweighed having to manually turn on the box and off a couple of times a week. If we ever go on holiday again (Covid if you’re reading this in 2030 or beyond) I can set duplicate recordings on one of the other two HDR’s that start reliably. I was content with this fudge fix.
That was the middle of January, fast forward to the beginning of March. It suddenly dawned on me I hadn’t had to manually boot the HDR for ages. So made a mental note to pay attention to how it was each morning for a week. It never missed a housekeep and only failed a 7am boot once, seeing the HDD first time I booted it. I set it back to Power Saving In Standby, that was a week and a half ago and it hasn’t missed any start since.
Theories? I have one. It just so happened in March we bought a new car. Well 3 years old but new to us. Like any self respecting man and husband the first thing I did when I knew the car was coming was find the manual online and read it cover to cover, so I know how the car works. I even read the bits about if the car was brand new. It said about the first 500 miles and I quote “All moving parts have to adapt themselves to each other”. Having recently read this then thinking about the HDR I wonder if the HDD experiences something similar. Slightly more resistance in parts that rub for the first X hours. I have read before somewhere the suggestion that the HDR power supply provides just enough power for the job. Maybe at some specific rest position the effort to start this drive was more than the HDR could manage, hence the intermittent nature of the drive not being seen or the box just no bothering.
So a Seagate ST2000VM003 works in a Foxsat HDR. But might want running in!!
