Help requested to resurrect dying HDR Fox T2

[badsector]

I have had this box for ages and it is still my favourite box with respect to the user interface feel and look.

Ironically I have recently had my Humax YouView DTR T1010 fail. After much messing around I found out that the Seagate Pipeline HD HDD was broken (it did not work in a Linux box). Installing a new SATA cdrive, and formatting, allowed the box to work again. But I had lost all my recordings.

With this in mind, last week I bought a WD My Cloud backup from Maplin. I thought it was Wifi - wrong! I also though that it could connect to the PC via USB3 - wrong! The intention was to backup my main Win7 PC disk and all the recordings on my HDR Fox T2.

I only use this box to watch the BBC news using the rewind buffer, as the disk is 100% full. So last night I tried to get the box out of standby in preparation for backup.I have v2.22 of custom firmware installed. It didn't wake up. So I power cycled, and the box went through some kind of continual re-boot sequence. So it appears that I have a problem with this box too!

I removed the HDD, and now the box boots and I can tune in. I connected the drive to my Linux box and it mounts OK and I was able to play at least one TS file using VLC on the Linux box. 99% of the other stuff is HD, and therefore encrypted. I have previously used the Foxy tools to unencrypt and transfer to an iPad for viewing.

I had read on another forum that it is worth powering the drive from an external supply. Luckily I had a suitable HDD PSU to hand and I connected the HDD from the YouView box. The T2 box booted but the hard disk entry in the system menu was greyed out. I then connected the ethernet and played around with the tools in the custom firmware. Fix-disk did not work. At this point I wasn't 100% sure if the SATA interface was working, however fdisk appeared to report the correct drive size. So the YouView partition format and T2 are not compatible - it was worth a try.

I tried to search around to find out how I should partition the drive. The Fix-disk utility suggested to me that there should be 3 partitions. I couldn't find and clear guidelines as to how to partition and format the disk.

So I tried a different blank HDD in the box, and again the disk menu option was greyed out. I don't know if this means that the SATA is broken or whether it just doesn't like the disk partition.

1) Can anyone help clarify how to correctly partition a 320Gb SATA drive for this box using either fdisk or GNU fdisk ( which I can run from the CLI). Can I do this using fdisk or is there a utility, Can the requirement for 3 partions be confirmed?

2) Under what circumstances does the disk management menu of the system menu blank out? Could this indicate a SATA problem?

3) I looked at the latest firmware and there are 3 versions, with minor differences in the filename. I couldn't find an explaination for what differences there were between the 3 binaries. Could someone explain?

4) If I use a SATA to USB converter and connect the USB to the box, a) will the box be able to mount the drive and see the recordings? b) will I be able to use the Foxy decrypt?

I will have another play this evening. I may try connecting the T2 drive to the Win7 PC, and use a special Linux driver to make a backup of all files. Then I would be prepared to try the original drive back in the box with the external PSU.

 

[prpr]

Too many questions, but does "fdisk -lu /dev/sda" with the drive plugged back as it should be give you anything or just an I/O error?
If the latter and you have tried a known working drive, then your SATA interface is probably broken.
The disk management options are greyed when the Humax software can't see the drive for whatever reason.

 

[Black Hole]

With this in mind, last week I bought a WD My Cloud backup from Maplin. I thought it was Wifi - wrong! I also though that it could connect to the PC via USB3 - wrong! The intention was to backup my main Win7 PC disk and all the recordings on my HDR Fox T2.

Don't you read a product spec before purchase?

I removed the HDD, and now the box boots and I can tune in. I connected the drive to my Linux box and it mounts OK and I was able to play at least one TS file using VLC on the Linux box. 99% of the other stuff is HD, and therefore encrypted. I have previously used the Foxy tools to unencrypt and transfer to an iPad for viewing.

The only TS file you will have been able to play is one that you had previously decrypted. All content is encrypted, whether HiDef or StDef, it's just more hoops to decrypt HiDef. See Things Every... (click) section 5.

I had read on another forum that it is worth powering the drive from an external supply.

Only if you are running the HDD via the USB port, or have some reason to suspect the HDR-FOX PSU is faulty in some way.

So the YouView partition format and T2 are not compatible

We know.

I tried to search around to find out how I should partition the drive. The Fix-disk utility suggested to me that there should be 3 partitions. I couldn't find and clear guidelines as to how to partition and format the disk.

So I tried a different blank HDD in the box, and again the disk menu option was greyed out. I don't know if this means that the SATA is broken or whether it just doesn't like the disk partition.

1) Can anyone help clarify how to correctly partition a 320Gb SATA drive for this box using either fdisk or GNU fdisk ( which I can run from the CLI). Can I do this using fdisk or is there a utility, Can the requirement for 3 partions be confirmed?

2) Under what circumstances does the disk management menu of the system menu blank out? Could this indicate a SATA problem?

If the disk format options are not available on the Humax menu, the system doesn't like the disk. Try pre-formatting it FAT and then offer it up again, the internal formatting operation is the easiest way to go about it unless you are trying to create a customised format.

3) I looked at the latest firmware and there are 3 versions, with minor differences in the filename. I couldn't find an explaination for what differences there were between the 3 binaries. Could someone explain?

They are various versions of the HDR-FOX standard firmware with the Custom Firmware added. There are pros and cons regarding the capabilities and inconveniences between the standard firmwares. See Things Every... (click) section 1.

4) If I use a SATA to USB converter and connect the USB to the box, a) will the box be able to mount the drive and see the recordings? b) will I be able to use the Foxy decrypt?

Yes. You've not done enough reading of the authoritative sources, or have been reading lesser crap.