HDR-FOX T2 HDD Replacement

Discs always have some bad sectors even when new, it is inevitable. Getting a few more over the years does not prove the disc is dying, it depends on the rate they appear at. If they occur on write the hard disc will automatically remap them without you ever knowing they were there. But if found on read of a previously good sector, that is when the filing system needs fixing.
 
Luke said:
Hopefully just the "Note" highlighted at the very start of that historic blog. :)
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It was more the general information on the shape of the partitions and filesystem was interesting. I'd be more likely to do any sort of procedure like that with the disk(s) plugged into a Linux desktop than natively on a Hummy. Especially as that blog's solution to copying the old drive's content to the new disk is a USB-SATA adapter (which would take forever) and it'd be much faster on the Desktop (couple of hours vs. several days?). Putting a new disk in just to have the Hummy format it, then taking it out for a fast copy of content via the desktop machine, then into the Hummy again to use it... I'd sooner just put it in the one time all ready to go, and creating the necessary partitions using the desktop is part of that.

Does always gives me sweaty palms messing around with this sort of stuff. You're one sloppy key-press away from typing, say, /dev/sde when you meant to type /dev/sdf and BOOM you've nuked something important and/or are back to square one. Backups matter.
 
Tim Day said:
Putting a new disk in just to have the Hummy format it, then taking it out for a fast copy of content via the desktop machine, then into the Hummy again to use it... I'd sooner just put it in the one time all ready to go, and creating the necessary partitions using the desktop is part of that.
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Others, and also myself, have put a new disk in just the once and then copied without taking the new disk out again. Putting the new disk in and then copying via USB using a SATA USB adapter without taking it out is the least labour intensive.
If it takes a long time in copying them your hardly likely to want to watch all of it before its completed copying. Plus the old disk is the backup.
 
Tim Day said:
Putting a new disk in just to have the Hummy format it, then taking it out for a fast copy of content via the desktop machine, then into the Hummy again to use it... I'd sooner just put it in the one time all ready to go, and creating the necessary partitions using the desktop is part of that.
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"Putting it in...", as you well know, just involves plugging two connectors in and switching on - takes 15 seconds total. It's a lot less labour intensive to let it partition and format in the Humax. Then you can disconnect it (another 10 seconds) and connect it to the PC (for optional but recommended re-format, and copy). Final installation obviously takes a little bit longer, but even that's not onerous. I would bet you'd spend more time mucking about with manual partitioning than even that took.
But as you seem fixated with your ideas...
 
Thinking about sticking a 2Tb drive in over Christmas.
No real tech issues with the original 500Gb yet, but I could do with more space.

Couple of questions..
- Any preferences of the WD purple vs the Seagate Skyhawk ?? Or are they much of a muchness ?

and
- The plan is to stick the new drive in. Humax formats it. Connect the old drive via a USB HD caddy I have. Copy my recordings over.
The only bit of the process worrying me is..
To restore the CF installation from the old HDD (without downloading it and reconfiguring it from scratch), copy the mod folder from the recording partition on the old HDD into the same place in the new HDD. Under the circumstances, with the old HDD connected by USB, this is most easily accomplished using Linux command-line commands via Telnet (not tested – the main problem is whether there are any "hidden" files to copy and whether "-R" will include them):
Click to expand...

So when I've stuck the new drive in.. will the CF not be working? Will I not be able to Telnet in to do the copy?
Anyone any experience in this. How to do it best.

ta
 
philbean said:
- The plan is to stick the new drive in. Humax formats it. Connect the old drive via a USB HD caddy I have. Copy my recordings over.
The only bit of the process worrying me is..


So when I've stuck the new drive in.. will the CF not be working? Will I not be able to Telnet in to do the copy?
Anyone any experience in this. How to do it best.

ta
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Take a look at this thread here
 
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philbean said:
will the CF not be working? Will I not be able to Telnet in to do the copy?
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Depends what you mean by "CF". The WebIF won't be there, all that stuff is stored on the HDD, but core things like Telnet are not on the HDD and still available with or without a HDD connected.
 
Thanks for the write up BH. I bought a WD blue 2 Tb for £40 from WD and installed it easily. I then took apart an old USB external drive to use for programme transfers from old HDD and fingers everything is going well. The HDD I can't hear except for faint clicks as it copies saved films through to the new drive. Many thanks, David
 
Loads of really useful info here which will be invaluable when I put in a new hard drive. Reallocated sector count is steadily increasing so was going to get a Skyhawk but found it's out of stock though there's a good deal on a 1 TB Toshiba S300, 5,400 rpm surveillance drive so will probably get that.
Just wondered if anybody's tried the Toshiba and have any experience or comments on it.

Thanks
Chris
 
kirkyboy said:
Loads of really useful info here which will be invaluable when I put in a new hard drive. Reallocated sector count is steadily increasing so was going to get a Skyhawk but found it's out of stock
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How high is the reallocated sector count?
 
The 2TB unit appears to be the sweet-spot, having a lower power consumption and a lower spindle speed than the 1TB unit (for reasons unspecified in the datasheet), but 21dB vs 19dB. And it's £25/TB as opposed to £40/TB. The quoted duty cycle is 180TB/year, which is (by my reckoning) exactly what it needs to be for 24/7 buffering!

Power consumption appears to be driven by whether the unit uses CMR or SMR, and the S300 range comprises 1, 2, 4, & 6TB models in a mixture of CMR and SMR technologies, with some capacities available in both (both the Toshiba web page and datasheet are garbled, containing typos and no clarification why there are three models with 4TB capacity!).

Thinking SMR might stand for Super Magneto Resistive (a recording head technology) and wondering what CMR might be, I went looking and discovered SMR isn't that at all: apparently it's Conventional Magnetic Recording vs Shingled Magnetic Recording, the latter allowing tracks to actually overlap and therefore pack more onto a platter. So there's less moving mass per TB with SMR, hence the lower power consumption, but still no explanation why the 1TB unit spins at 5700rpm vs 5400rpm for all the other units.

Is SMR a good or a bad thing? Well, according to this article SMR requires writes to be cached to a CMR section of the drive for an intricate dance involving writing multiple tracks on the SMR section, and (I extrapolate) might be what gave the WD Red series a bad name. The problem is if the cache fills up, so writes are then forced to go directly to SMR in which case the write speed reduces dramatically.

Nonetheless, Toshiba rate these drives as recording from 64 HiDef sources simultaneously, so they don't think the sustained write performance is a problem.

Conclusion: maybe settle for the 1TB CMR unit. Or be a pioneer and experiment with the 2TB SMR unit in the interests of science.
 
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Black Hole said:
The 2TB unit appears to be the sweet-spot, having a lower power consumption and a lower spindle speed than the 1TB unit (for reasons unspecified in the datasheet), but 21dB vs 19dB. And it's £25/TB as opposed to £40/TB. The quoted duty cycle is 180TB/year, which is (by my reckoning) exactly what it needs to be for 24/7 buffering!

Power consumption appears to be driven by whether the unit uses CMR or SMR, and the S300 range comprises 1, 2, 4, & 6TB models in a mixture of CMR and SMR technologies, with some capacities available in both (both the Toshiba web page and datasheet are garbled, containing typos and no clarification why there are three models with 4TB capacity!).

Thinking SMR might stand for Super Magneto Resistive (a recording head technology) and wondering what CMR might be, I went looking and discovered SMR isn't that at all: apparently it's Conventional Magnetic Recording vs Shingled Magnetic Recording, the latter allowing tracks to actually overlap and therefore pack more onto a platter. So there's less moving mass per TB with SMR, hence the lower power consumption, but still no explanation why the 1TB unit spins at 5700rpm vs 5400rpm for all the other units.

Is SMR a good or a bad thing? Well, according to this article SMR requires writes to be cached to a CMR section of the drive for an intricate dance involving writing multiple tracks on the SMR section, and (I extrapolate) might be what gave the WD Red series a bad name. The problem is if the cache fills up, so writes are then forced to go directly to SMR in which case the write speed reduces dramatically.

Nonetheless, Toshiba rate these drives as recording from 64 HiDef sources simultaneously, so they don't think the sustained write performance is a problem.

Conclusion: maybe settle for the 1TB CMR unit. Or be a pioneer and experiment with the 2TB SMR unit in the interests of science.
Click to expand...
That's all a bit above my level of understanding but I get the general idea.
Black Hole said:
Which?
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As I only use about 75% of my existing 500MB drive don't really need more than 1TB which is what I ordered.
 
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