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Internal Hard Drive Showing as USB

Parce

Parce

New Member
Okay, so I was attempting to format a 16gb USB on my HDR-FOX T2, as I had some files larger than 4gb that needed moving. After formatting I only encountered a couple of issues:

Firstly my 16gb USB now shows as 29gb(?!).

Secondly, and most importantly, my internal hard drive is now showing in the USB storage section, as well as showing as normal. I have 4 drives showing, the USB occupies drive1, the hard drive appears to occupy 2 and 3, with the majority on 2, including what looks like a time-shift file, and 10gb unused space on 3. And drive4 I assume would be occupied by a second USB.

Now, my main concern is whether this is going to pose any problems for my box, or should I just attempt a factory reset (bear in mind I'm running the official firmware 1.03.12). I tried a quick recording, and it appears fine, it just shows up in both sections.

I don't think it will cause any issues, as it just appears to be a complete mirror of my drive.
 
Very odd. The internal drive has three partitions, 1 and 3 are hidden. It looks as though it is also mounting each partition as a USB drive: that's why you are seeing 4 USB drives in total. If you shut down, wait until the hard drive has spun down and disconnect the physical USB drive, what happens when you switch back on? Now you should not get the USB option when you press the blue storage button on the remote. If you then plug the USB stick back in, what happens? Are the 'extra' drives remounted as USB drives or do you just see the one physical USB?
 
A complete power off appears to have fixed it. It didn't when I just turned it off with the remote though. Even with the USB unplugged, it would give me the USB option, and show me four drives. Now, after unplugging it from the mains, it is all back to normal, including the USB showing as 16gb.
 
Why do so many people totally ignore the old adage to power cycle stuff? Power cycle means 'disconnect mains - reconnect mains' not switch it into standby with the RC.
 
Formatting a UPD is not a straight-forward process, there are many variations on the driver requirements (which is why plugging a new one into a PC usually results in a "loading driver" message, even though many have been plugged in before). It is therefore surprising that the Humax (with only a limited range of driver support) was able to format it at all - and it will have resulted in an Ext3 format which is not very kind to solid-state non-volatile memory (ie UPD, SSD).

If it worked, that's great, but I would treat it with caution - you may find it didn't format at all and is still FAT32, or be unreliable. You certainly found the Humax got very confused. The best option is to use a bootable Linux on a PC and format the UPD to Ext2 externally to the Humax (or install custom firmware on the Humax and then you can use NTFS).

See Things Every... (click) section 12.
 
I used to use it as an Ext2 drive by formatting with my Ubuntu install, however, it never seemed to work 100% like that with my box (for example, telling me an hour file was actually around 24 hours, then another which would play at ultra speed!). So I decided that the Humax would probably work best with it if it had formatted it itself...apparently not.

This would be my one reason for turning to the custom firmware, but even though it is highly commended, I'm still cautious of it.
 
Your choice, but there is no need for caution this far into its development cycle. We have all bases covered (and any problems which do crop up are currently dealt with quickly), and there is a clean "uninstall" path.

However, I am more interested whether your Ext3 format was actually successful.

Parce said:
Ext2... never seemed to work 100% like that with my box (for example, telling me an hour file was actually around 24 hours, then another which would play at ultra speed!)
Click to expand...
Weird.
 
Parce said:
This would be my one reason for turning to the custom firmware, but even though it is highly commended, I'm still cautious of it.
Click to expand...

Caution is a good approach in general, but in the specific case of the HDR-FOX T2 custom firmware, you needn't be cautious.

If you install it and don't like it, then you can easily uninstall back to clean 'return to manufacturer' state.
However, far more likely, you will find it gives you so much valuable functionality, that you'll wonder how you lived without it, and wish you'd installed it earlier.:)
 
Okay, it didn't work too well...again. I think it must just be the stability of the Ext formats that don't agree with the moving of the file. One file is semi-okay, it high speeds through the first five minutes then appears to play fine, without sound. The other file appears to be incomplete towards the end, again, totally without sound.

In light of all this, I think I may give the CFW a whirl, to see if the file transfer works properly with NTFS.
 
The custom firmware is excellent, and this will enable writing to NTFS. To solve your immediate problem I would format the USB stick on your computer in EXT2 format, but do a full format. This will take longer, but whenever I've had problems with USB sticks it is when I have cut corners and ticked the 'quick format' box.
 
Installed the CFW trouble free (apart from minor internet issues).

The files which I was attempting to move when all this started are no longer playing up. Hopefully won't have the issues any more.

Thanks for all your help.
 
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