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Humax won't recognise external portable 160GB Hard Disk

W

wolfmanii

New Member
Hi, I have a 160GB external portable Hard disk that I have formatted to EXT3 type. It works fine plugged into PC (with drivers). However when I plug it into Humax, the Humax does not recognise it is there. Though when I unplug it, I get a message 'USB device has been disconnected'. Also if I leave it in the Humax and power up the Humax, the Humax hangs at the beginning of booting.

I tried using a mains powered USB Hub, but this also causes the Humax to hang at boot.

I also have a 16GB memory stick (ext3) this works fine.

Any help would be appreciated.
 
It sounds like the partition table may have the wrong partition type for the EXT3 partition. Can you use something like gparted to check that it is type 82 (hex)?
 
wolfmanii said:
Hi, I have a 160GB external portable Hard disk that I have formatted to EXT3 type. It works fine plugged into PC (with drivers). However when I plug it into Humax, the Humax does not recognise it is there.
Click to expand...

As an alternative to af123's suggestion, is there some reason you didn't want to format the drive using the Humax? If not, try formatting it.

Menu > Settings > System > Data Storage > Storage​
Select the external drive (presuming it's listed)​
> Format Storage​
 
af123 said:
It sounds like the partition table may have the wrong partition type for the EXT3 partition. Can you use something like gparted to check that it is type 82 (hex)?
Click to expand...
I think you mean type 83 (type 82 is Linux swap).
 
Humax would not see the drive, so could not format it. (I looked in the menu systemw here you suggested Black Hole but it was not listed)

I will check GParted to see what type.

Would this affect the booting of the Humax when Hard Disk is plugged in?
 
Contacted Humax Support, they suggested formatting from Humax, which I have tried, but Humax does not recognise the drive being plugged in.

Was asked to format as FAT32 then plug in to format ast EXT3, so I don't know what type the EXT3 partition was. Any other ideas?
 
As an update. Attached a Samsung 1.5TB Story formatted to NTFS, Humax saw it immediately and allowed files to be played from it. Also when switched off and switched back on with disk attached, booted OK.

So, what could be wrong with this 160GB drive. It is a Hitachi drive taken out of an old laptop and installed in a generic HD Caddy from Amazon Marketplace
 
Oh well then... There are a multiplicity of drivers for mass storage devices on Windows, but only a few on the Humax Linux.
 
OK, looks like I need to save the pennies up for a new external hard disk unless someone can recommend a caddy that will work with the HUMAX.
 
I have seen. Humax is only 2 months old, so do not want to mess with it too much, also use that drive as a backup drive on PC. Perhaps I need to wait until Hard Disk prices come back down to a sensible levels prior to Thai floods.
 
Assuming you don't have any data you wish to keep on the 160GB drive, you can telnet into the box and try the following (I have not tried it myself):

Power up the Humax with no drive attached.
Plug in the 160GB drive.
Run the command
Code: 
fdisk -l
If the disk is "healthy", you will see /dev/sdb in the list of disks. Make sure fdisk reports 160GB for it. You can then zero the first sector of the drive using the command
Code: 
dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sdb bs=512 count=1
The zeroing operation effectively wipes out any previous format information on the drive.
Unplug the drive and plug it in again and see if the Humax Setup screen (on the TV) now lets you to format it.

Oops, I just realised you may not be running the custom firmware, in which case the above won't work and you will need to do it on a linux PC instead.
 
sooty83 said:
Run the command
Code: 
fdisk -l
If the disk is "healthy", you will see /dev/sdb in the list of disks. Make sure fdisk reports 160GB for it. You can then zero the first sector of the drive using the command
Code: 
dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sdb bs=512 count=1
The zeroing operation effectively wipes out any previous format information on the drive.
Unplug the drive and plug it in again and see if the Humax Setup screen (on the TV) now lets you to format it.
Click to expand...
WARNING: The drive you want to wipe may not be /dev/sdb. On the HDR, the internal controller scans the USB before looking for its internal driive. If the USB drive was connected before powering up /dev/sda would be a USB drive and /dev/sdb would be the internal drive. If it was connected after powering up then they should be the other way round (but I would advise to make very sure before wiping any secors).
 
It's OK, the Humax does not see the drive so there was nothing to do.

Formatted drive in Linux, hen plugged it in, still could not be seen.
 
On the Linux box could you type 'lsusb' and 'lsmod' when the disk is plugged in? It may give us a clue as to what drivers are being used.
 
Wolfmanii, your Humax *is* seeing the drive in some way because it noticed when you unplugged it, and it refused to boot when you attempted to power up the box with the drive attached. It is just possible that if the external drive wasn't a) in a recognised format or b) unformatted, the Humax software would play safe and "pretend" it didn't see it. Unfortunately, I don't have a spare drive to verify this. By zeroing the first sector of your drive, you make it look like a new, unformatted drive to the Humax and might just be enough to persuade it to "see" the drive and let you format it. If you don't have the Humax custom firmware installed, your can do the "dd" on a linux box, but just be careful with the /dev/sdx device name - read the fdisk output and make sure it refers to the 160GB drive you are trying to fix. Don't attempt to format the drive again before you plug it into the Humax. Does this make sense?
 
Gentlemen, I think this is all getting way out of proportion. To summarise so far:
  • Wolfmanii has an old reclaimed 160GB drive that he slapped into a cheap USB drive caddy. He also has an NTFS external drive.
  • The NTFS drive works fine as far as reading goes, and he is unwilling to install the custom software to make it writable.
  • The reclaimed-drive-plus-caddy upsets the Humax when plugged in, which is easily explained by it not being properly supported in the Humax drivers.
 
Black Hole said:
Gentlemen, I think this is all getting way out of proportion. To summarise so far:
  • Wolfmanii has an old reclaimed 160GB drive that he slapped into a cheap USB drive caddy. He also has an NTFS external drive.
  • The NTFS drive works fine as far as reading goes, and he is unwilling to install the custom software to make it writable.
  • The reclaimed-drive-plus-caddy upsets the Humax when plugged in, which is easily explained by it not being properly supported in the Humax drivers.
Click to expand...

I have exactly the same problem. An 250GB NTFS formatted IDE drive in a USD caddy. Humax does not see it but does notice a usb being disconnected. I am ruuning the latest version of the custom firmware with ntfs-3g installed. lsusb and fdisk show nothing. Any help would be usful.
 
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