Owen Smith
Well-Known Member
My view is to avoid SMR (shingled) drives like the plague, with the possible exception of drives used for backup purposes only.
HDR-FOX T2 HDD Replacement
- Thread starter Sargan
- Start date
Black Hole
May contain traces of nut
Being CMR, that appears to be the lower-risk choice.
The article I linked particularly slams the SMR version of the WD Red in the very demanding situation of rebuilding a RAID, where a ten-fold increase in the rebuild completion time results in the array no longer having redundancy and therefore exposing an enterprise system to data risk for much longer than if another type of drive were used for the rebuild. By "rebuild", I mean reconstructing the array when one drive out of four has been taken out of service and replaced using a WD Red, so that the redundancy in the array is used to recreate the data from the missing drive, while the array remains in service.
That hardly constitutes a problem with SMR in general, in less demanding situations, and might only affect the WD implementation. Certainly it appears an SMR drive has an awful lot of extra work to do, but Toshiba offer the same warranty assurances.
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RickRandom
New Member
I'd like to say Many Thanks for this post. It allowed me to upgrade my old 500GB drive, which was regularly so close to full that I'd have to delete stuff to make space for what my wife considers essential to be recorded, and allowed us to keep all the things that we haven't got round to watching yet.
I used a 2TB Seagate Skyhawk, swapped it out very easily using the very good instructions in:
hummy.tv
The Humax then offered to format it, all fine, as described in this thread.
I then connected the old drive via a USB-sata adapter, and transferred all the old recordings to the new drive, all as described in this thread. Yes it was very slow, the best part of 2 days to transfer, in small alphabetical groups. But I'm too mean to spend another £25 or so on another USB-sata adapter!
The transfers will continue even while you play existing ones or record new ones.
One warning - don't let someone try to play and then delete the specific recording that is being transferred at that time. That lead to the Humax "hanging", needing power off and on again. But other than that one recording, no harm done.
I used a 2TB Seagate Skyhawk, swapped it out very easily using the very good instructions in:
HDR-FOX T2 HDD Replacement
My Humax has had 2 significant issues this year related to HDD and fault count increasing So time to think about replacing. Assuming that Seagate Pipeline is no longer available - (is it?) do I get a Skyhawk or are there others to consider. I have a 1TB ... but suppose might as well put in a...
The Humax then offered to format it, all fine, as described in this thread.
I then connected the old drive via a USB-sata adapter, and transferred all the old recordings to the new drive, all as described in this thread. Yes it was very slow, the best part of 2 days to transfer, in small alphabetical groups. But I'm too mean to spend another £25 or so on another USB-sata adapter!
The transfers will continue even while you play existing ones or record new ones.
One warning - don't let someone try to play and then delete the specific recording that is being transferred at that time. That lead to the Humax "hanging", needing power off and on again. But other than that one recording, no harm done.
Black Hole
May contain traces of nut
If that's all that hung, consider yourself lucky!
Owen Smith
Well-Known Member
How would that have made things any faster if you'd bought one? The main way to do this faster would be to connect both old and new drives to a PC (Linux or Windows) in some way that was not restricted by USB2 speeds.
Black Hole
May contain traces of nut
Yes, but the USB port on the HDR-FOX is far slower than even USB2 is capable.
Owen Smith
Well-Known Member
I'd always wondered why it is glacial copying files. Do we know why it is so slow?
Black Hole
May contain traces of nut
It's a bit quicker if there's no on-the-fly decryption in the process (or is it a bit slower if there is – I forget, but it's hardly material!)
Cheap hardware, value-engineered to do just the job that's needed and no more, to retail at a specific price point. Lightning file transfers were not on the must-have list!
Owen Smith
Well-Known Member
I know I had auto decryption enabled in webif, I remember doing it and some my older saved recordings are decrypted. But it appears to have silently got disabled a few years ago, I wonder which webif update did that? I've turned it back on now.
Yeah but it takes effort to make it this slow. Maybe the PHY is only USB 1.1 standard speed, none of this USB 2 High Speed "new" fangled stuff.
Black Hole
May contain traces of nut
Cynic! But I admit the MCB7405 data says the USB transceiver is capable of 480Mbps. Perhaps it's just Humax being inept as usual.
Let's face it: That's why we love the T2
Black Hole
May contain traces of nut
No update should have disabled recursive auto-decryption, because the setting is a flag file (.autodecryptR). There are a few reasons the flag file might go missing, or might not be acted on (Content Share needs to be ON, and an active network connection is required).
MymsMan
Ad detector
There was an update a few years back that changed the name of the recursive flag file names so there is a possibility that the auto-rename part of the update failed.
RickRandom
New Member
From my perspective, using the Humax's USB interface was the low risk approach (I didn't want to struggle to access all my wife's "essential" recordings) and I was well-informed by this thread about the slow speed.
We've been Humax PVR users for nearly 20 years, I guess, and it might seem old-fashioned but back then it did revolutionise our TV watching, and it's what we know and (mostly) love.
We don't really do internet streaming of TV (can't skip adverts), so giving our T2 a new lease of practical life was the best option for us.
We've been Humax PVR users for nearly 20 years, I guess, and it might seem old-fashioned but back then it did revolutionise our TV watching, and it's what we know and (mostly) love.
We don't really do internet streaming of TV (can't skip adverts), so giving our T2 a new lease of practical life was the best option for us.
There's been some questions here regarding using the 2TB Toshiba S300 (HDWT720UZSVA) as a replacement drive. I decided to replace the original 500GB Seagate Pipeline in mine because I was getting low on free space and then started to get drive warnings everytime I used Web-IF. Earlier this week I had some time on my hands to do this and was originally planning to use the 2TB Seagate Skyhawk but found it unavailable for quick delivery so instead thought I would try the Toshiba as I could get that next day. I successfully installed this last Tuesday and am happy to report that it seems to be working perfectly.
I'd like to thank all the contributors to this thread, in fact the entire forum, for the invaluable information it provides for all things Humax and the creators of the customised firmware and add on packages.
I'd like to thank all the contributors to this thread, in fact the entire forum, for the invaluable information it provides for all things Humax and the creators of the customised firmware and add on packages.
Please keep us posted on how this works out over the next few years.
Julie
New Member
I have been all through this thread and I cannot see anything related to my problem - the HDR-T2 doesn't think that the hard drive is present. I have done the factory reset and re-loaded the custom firmware and even that thinks there is no HD.
If I just replace the disc, will I need to load some sort of OS?
Thank you
If I just replace the disc, will I need to load some sort of OS?
Thank you
Attachments
Owen Smith
Well-Known Member
The OS is in Flash so you can just connect a new blank disc, format it and start from there. If you have installed the custom firmware on the old drive you will have to do that again, but that's no harder the second time than it was the first.
Black Hole
May contain traces of nut
See the original post for details how to chose a replacement drive, but note there is a risk your HDD is not being recognised because the interface has failed rather than the drive. If you can at least take the drive out and test it to confirm it has failed, that would be a good move.
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prpr
Well-Known Member
The CF is the bit that goes to flash. The WebIf and associated packages goes (mostly) on the disk drive.