HDD replacement

Jeddy

Member
Hi, I don't doubt the information is here somewhere, but I'm having trouble finding it. Please could someone point me to instructions to how to replace a HDD with a 1TB drive (hopefully almost identical Seagate drive). I've seen instructions for upgrading to a 2TB which I believe are much more long winded due to the Hummy not being able to format it.
As best I can gather, its a case of whip out the old drive and pop in the new drive and let the Hummy take care of formatting it. Is that the size of it? Does this maintain all my recording schedule etc., or do I need to copy any files across?

Also, I'd like to copy across what old recordings and other settings I can to the new drive from the old drive. I have a drive caddy, so once I've got the new drive working, can I then just stick the old drive in the caddy, put it in the USB and copy? The programs I can find, but where are the files and settings, recording schedule held, which dir should I copy and which should I leave well alone.

For info, the old disk has been getting worse and worse, picture breakups, scrambled recordings msgs during playback and is now
Disk realloc sector count is: 265 (was 260)
Disk pending sector count is: 3 (was 2)
Disk offline sector count is: 3 (was 2)
I have pending system notifications about upgrades to webif and wireless-tools which I can't acknowledge, the Remote and Package mgmt images now fail to display, if I Browse Media Files, the Clipboard is permanently Loading so I'm not able to use any of the options on that screen. I did go into Mtce Mode from Putty and do a Long disk check which found errors it was unable to correct - hence why I'm trying to replace the drive.

Thanks and apologies for failing to find this information myself.
Jeddy
 
The first bit is easy. Open the box then it's pretty obvious what needs to be done if you are at all practically minded. If not, get someone else to do it. There is an article somewhere (I can't be bothered to search, but someone will). There is no longer a 1TiB limit on the HDR T2 (there used to be, but it depends on what firmware it is running). I have just put a 2TiB drive in mine and it formatted 2TiB no problem.
You would be advised to re-format the old drive before using it in a caddy, as it is formatted by the Hummy as three partitions (or whatever they are called) but you only need one using the whole drive space.
Edit to remove last para. Didn't read question properly.
 
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Thanks for the confirmation on the first bit, swapping a HDD from a physical perspective doesn't bother me (done it many times).

However any suggestions how to keep the recording schedule / settings / already recorded (encrypted) programs please?
 
None of the recording schedule etc is kept on the HDD, so that's no problem. To make the old recordings available, connect the old HDD to the Humax using a USB adapter.
 
This sounds too simple to be true!

If you have Custom Firmware installed make a note of what packages you have installed and any settings.
  1. Take out the old HDD
  2. Stick in the new HDD
  3. Turn it on and let it format - things will now start recording as per current schedule
  4. Stick the old drive in a caddy
  5. Connect the old drive to the Hummy via a USB port
  6. Copy all files across (no need to worry about encryption)
If you have custom firmware installed when you try to connect to the web interface, you'll be prompted to download and install the Web Interface software.
After that you'll need to reinstall any CF packages you have.

and I'll have everything I had before (except a dodgy drive).
Do I have that correct?
 
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This sounds too simple to be true!
  1. Take out the old HDD
  2. Stick in the new HDD
  3. Turn it on and let it format - things will now start recording as per current schedule
  4. Stick the old drive in a caddy
  5. Connect the old drive to the Hummy via a USB port
  6. Copy all files across (no need to worry about encryption)
and I'll have everything I had before (except a dodgy drive).
Do I have that correct?
Yes. However as the drive doesn't seem to be in too bad a state my advice would be to install the custom firmware and try running fix-disk.
 
Yup.

That work-flow has always been available for drives up to 1TB, and with 1.03 firmware now up to 2TB. Previously >1TB drives required a bit of work.

Encrypted recordings are irrelevant providing the .hmt file remains intact and the files are accessed by the machine that recorded them. Copying StDef recordings from the external drive to the internal one will result in them being decrypted (a property of the Humax UI copy command - it doesn't matter where the copy goes, as long as it is not a "move"), but StDef and HiDef recordings can also be played from where they are (encrypted or not).
 
Thanks for the confirmation, that's great.
It looks like I have fix-disk installed however I'm not sure how to invoke that, if it's from the diagnostics menu then I'm no longer able to do that because of the previously mentioned problem (unable to acknowledge pending system notifications).
 
Ah right, I now see that when I said "I did go into Mtce Mode from Putty and do a Long disk check which found errors it was unable to correct" that this was actually fix-disk (I just accessed it from Mtce Mode and Option 1 , I didn't notice the fix-disk name). From memory this resulted in "pending sectors but LBA not found" I have seen http://hummy.tv/forum/threads/fix-disk-error-pending-sectors-but-lba-not-found.4882/ but not tried to progress this any further. Given that the HDD has gone from fine before Xmas regularly increasing realloc sector count I can't help think the drive is dodgy?
 
and todays figures...
Disk realloc sector count is: 267 (was 260)
Disk pending sector count is: 3 (was 2)
Disk offline sector count is: 3 (was 2)

i.e. 265 has become 267
like I say, the drive seems suspect to me.
 
. . . any suggestions how to keep the recording schedule
The Custom Firmware automatically backs up your recording schedule and any favourites lists you created into this folder e.g.:-
/mod/var/backup/auto-2013-Feb-22-18:06.rbk
all you need to do is copy the latest rbk file from one HDD to the other
 
But if all you are doing is changing the HDD, the recording schedule will be unaffected. I agree that the .rbk file provides a second line defence (useful if the HDR goes into a factory restart). Copy DB to USB (hidden service menu) is an alternative (Copy DB to Flash being the restore process).
 
Well this seems to be working ok. The Hummy is up and working again and the recording schedule was restored. The files from the old drive (in the caddy) are slowly being copied across and seem to be ok (the one or two I've checked). I did however find that my above list was incomplete if you have CF installed, so I've updated it above to mention that if you have CF installed you'll have to re-download the Web Interface and re-install any extra packages you had installed - to help anyone else who stumbles this way.
I've also now got a display that I can actually see too! ;) (Actually, that was the hard / fiddly bit.)
Thanks guys.
 
What it means is that I don't understand what's going on under the covers! Maybe I should have said was still there. Let's put it this way, I didn't have to do anything and all my scheduled recordings were still present. :)
(I confess I'm still in the mindset of a Topfield where the recording schedule was on the hard disk so I'd have had to do something in order to maintain it. I don't really understand where the recording schedule / firmware is held on the Hummy if not on the HDD - I guess there is some form of solid state drive?)
 
Hello - the realloc sector count on my 500Gb hard drive is increasing by 2 or 3 each day (it's now at 145), many recordings are now glitchy and running the fix disk doesn't appear to have made any difference. I'm now looking at getting hold of a 2 Tb drive to replace the existing one. Would this be an suitable one to go for?

http://www.ebuyer.com/414223-seagat...ium=products&gclid=CPTNoamW18MCFeHLtAodQTQAUw

(Seagate Pipeline SATA-III 5900 rpm)

Many thanks!
 
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