Hard disk not found - replaced hard disk - Hard disk unmounted

Chris White

New Member
Dear Folks.

I could do with some help. I have a HDR - Fox T2 that the media disappeared completely. I believe that the hard disk failed. I have replaced the hard disk with a brand new identical Seagate Pipeline HD 2 ST3500312CS as the original. PC formated out of the box.

I have installed the latest CF firmware and can access the box using telnet. But all the time I am getting messages saying that their is no hard disk in the system or that it is unmounted.

Can anyone assist or is the motherboard screwed. The disk runs up.

Regards,
Chris.
 
Has the new hard drive been formatted by the HDR-Fox? It creates three partitions in ext3 format. Can you format the hard drive through the Humax SUI using the remote control?
 
No, it does not recognise that there is a new hard disk in the system. I tried resetting to factory defaults and at the same time ticking the format HD checkbox but that does nothing.
 
Use the PC to remove the partition/s so it's unallocated space, place in the set top box and then use the GUI to format the hard drive
 
Use the PC to remove the partition/s so it's unallocated space, place in the set top box and then use the GUI to format the hard drive

I agree, remember the humax is Linux based which uses ownership for one for security, if it hasn't formatted the partitions they will not be owned by root so cannot be written to by all processes.

Also as MontysEvilTwin mentioned, drives usually come formated to the archaic NTFS format, where the box uses the much more modern ext3 format.
 
NTFS dates from 1996 and EXT3 from 2001 so both have been around for some time.

Yes, Linux uses Ext4 now yet microsoft dare not move from NTFS despite all the disadvantages. Don't know why Humax chose Ext3 over Ext4 as it was available at the time of release of the T2.
 
Yes, Linux uses Ext4 now yet microsoft dare not move from NTFS despite all the disadvantages. Don't know why Humax chose Ext3 over Ext4 as it was available at the time of release of the T2.
ext4 was released in late December 2008. The HDR-FOX T2 was released in mid 2010; it would have been in development for some time before that so I would say ext4 was just too new but it certainly offers some advantages for use in a PVR.
 
I agree, remember the humax is Linux based which uses ownership for one for security, if it hasn't formatted the partitions they will not be owned by root so cannot be written to by all processes.
Everything runs as root. There is no security.
 
Everything runs as root. There is no security.

I was talking of security within Linux, not on the box.

I have placed files on a drive before putting it back in the machine (foxsat in that case) and forgot to assign correct ownership, the box had trouble till I corrected that.
 
Sorry for being a bit slow. I did not have a SATA PC into which to put this drive so have had to get a SATA to USB 3.0 enclosure to make it work. I have removed the partition so that the disk is no "Unallocated Space" and put it back into the T2. On switching on it does not do anything apart from tell me that there are "No channels detected". Once I use automatic detection I get all the channels but pressing the media button does nothing.

If I use the IP address of the T2 in a browser I get the following message:

"To install the full web interface and supporting packages a suitably formatted internal hard disk must be present and none was detected.

This is unexpected - a HDR-Fox T2 should have an internal disk which is already formatted appropriately."

If I telnet into the box and use the ls -d /sys/block/sd? as suggested above I get a standard "No such file or directory".

I am beginning to wonder if it the the motherboard that has failed rather than the hard disk. If I attach the old disk to my PC I can see there are three partitions on the disk and Windows 10 Disk Manager seems to think that they are fine. I have not yet done a diskcheck on them.
 
Check the new disk isn't formatted GPT instead of MBR.

If I attach the old disk to my PC I can see there are three partitions on the disk and Windows 10 Disk Manager seems to think that they are fine.
That should not be the case - a HDR-FOX Drive is formatted Ext3, and Windows should have no truck with that.
 
Absolutely, it is formatted Ext3. I am using Partition Magic to view the disk. As I said the old disk has 3 partitions on it and Partition Magic is able to view the contents of the partitions. (This is the old disk that I thought had failed.) The new disk is completely virgin. It is completely un-allocated space, so has yet to be formatted. I understood that if I put a new clean disk in the T2 that it would do the formatting automatically. My problem seems to be that it does not recognise that there is a disk in the machine at all.
 
What does the new disk have after P/N 9GW132-???. If it has 191 or above it is SATA 2, if it has 012 then it is SATA 1 and appears not to work in Humax HDR-T2 . Check also the old disk number as well.
 
In the T2, if you go to Settings->system->data Storage

What does it say about the drive? That is where you can format it too.
 
To get my T2 to work with the new 2nd hand disk I had to blank the MBR sector just leaving 55AA the end of sector marker and then the T2 saw the disk.
 
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