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New HDD - Format only gave 1 drive?

I

inspiredron

Member
This must be an old chestnut but I cannot find a previous relevant thread.

I have just put a 1Tb disk in my HDR FoxT2. Everything went swimmingly and on turning the Humax on I got an immediate invitation to format the disk which I accepted. I had previously formatted the disk (which was from a retired Windws machine) in ext3 (as a single partition) and the formatting completed very quickly announcing that I had 1000Gb total storage of which some (I canot remember how much) was used. I think that around 885Gb was left. That again seemed fine.
I then placed the old disk in a usb2 caddy and set up auto-copy of the video files to transfer the library. Again it seemed to start OK as expected. Half an hour later I checked that copying was taking place only to find that Media - HDD showed me what appeared to be a flat directory structure with no trace of Disk1, Disk2 and Disk3. Instead I could see a lot of unfamiliar folders (the contents of Disks 1 and 3) plus a folder called My Video. If I look at the usb drive (the old drive in the caddy) I do see th three drives as the first sight and Disk2 has my recordings, as expected.
Has the formatting to 3 drives gone wrong because of my PC format to ext3 and how do I recover the situation. Or am I worying about nothing?
Grateful for some help please

PS I know that you recommend transferring recordings in small batches. I did auto copy because I was nervous about putting the recordings in the right place on the new disk
 
Thanks fo rth equick response
When I connected the usb caddy and selected it there was a copy option on the TV screen _ cannot remember the details but when I selected the copy option i then had to choose between music, vdeo and photo. I selected video an dthen had the option of manual copy or auto copy. Initially I selected manual copy but then I had to select what folders to copy and where to copy them to. Unsure if Humax would create its own folder structure I exited and started th eprocess again selecting aut copy.
Now I have a folder structure on the new HDD with a folder that contains the epg and lots of others plus the folder "My Video(s?) to which th erecordings are being copied. It may well be that the autocopy is copying files that are already in a "Disk1" and "Disk3" on my new drive to Drive 2 and that it is simply putting the videos in a new top level folder called "My Videos" - IF the formatting was correct. I would not expect to see Drives 1 & 3 on the TV screen Humax menus and when I look at Drive 2 on the old drive via the usb caddy I see all the recordings folders as top level folders in Drive 2, not as subfolders of My Videos. But losing about 100Gb seems too large for for FAT and other overheads, looking as if I really do have a Drive 1 and drive 3 which are invisible on an internal drive.
I have not dared to install web-if yet as I am not certain where it will go! Very confusing for a 75 year old who enjoys tinkering! :)
 
Fourth line of above is misleading - I have a number of folders with copies of what is in Drives 1 & 3 on the old disk (and possibly also already on the new disk in similar drives) and which include one with the epg data.
 
Disk 1, Disk 2, Disk 3? I think you are probably getting this because the Humax format of a disk sets up several partitions for various housekeeping, only one of which is the store for My Video, My Music, and My Photos! Plugging the old disk in via a caddy just made the system recognise the partitions as separate disks.

My recommendation is that you wipe the new disk and start again, but this time don't accept the copy options that appear on-screen when you plug in the old disk! Press Exit and then control the process yourself. You will have to select all the recordings in the old My Video (use Red to mark each one, then OPT+ >> Copy to transfer them), and then repeat for recordings in folders (select the folder and then OPT+ >> Copy).

What does this have to do with custom firmware? If "nothing", this topic should be in the vanilla section.
 
Sorry if I have posted in the wrong forum - it seemed the right place as I am using custom firmware. Perhaps administrator can move the thread?
Yes - Disk 1, Disk 2, Disk 3 was mentioned somewhere on th eForum or in the Wiki, including the contents thereof and particularly Disk 2 for recordings.

Returning to my question: - Thank you for the (partial) reply, Black Hole.
My first question to you is: How do I check that the Format process did actually make the 3 partitions from my single pre-formatted ext3 partition without removing the disk again and putting it in a caddy or another PC? I cannot remember if Web-if lets me see the housekeeping partitions (a good reason for my question to be in custom firmware rather than vanilla?)

Second: Do I infer from your refernce to the recording partition that it contains 3 parent folders called "My Video", My Music" and "My Photos"?

Third: The copying process is already about a third through and will finish if I leave it overnight. If, as is already happening, the recordings are all being copied into "My Video" and assuming that I can somehow substantiate that the format did make the two housekeeping partitions as well as the recording partition than why cannot I simply delete the folders that contain the copied housekeeping files that appear to be in the recordings partition?

Fourth: Your recommendation seems to indicate that I will have to reconstruct the "Series" folders manually ("repeat for recordings in folders") or will "red" select a complete folder for copying?

Fifth: I presume that to wipe the disk I format again and not mark red all files and folders followed by OPT+ >> Delete to avoid fragmentation?

Sixth: Where does Web-if install? In one of the housekeeping partitions or in the firmware memory?

Apologies if this seems excessive. I did look for threads (both Vanilla and Custom) and in the Wiki before I started this operation and managed to find only one thread that appeared useful. That, at least, gave enough information to change the disk, though I found it easier to remove the fan from the caddy than to remove the fan connector from the motherboard.

I would be grateful for further guidance before I simply "suck it and see" which is my alternative.

Thanks
Ron
 
It really isn't as difficult as you seem to be trying to make it.

inspiredron said:
How do I check that the Format process did actually make the 3 partitions
Click to expand...
Just accept that it has. It's internal detail you don't need to worry about.

inspiredron said:
Do I infer from your refernce to the recording partition that it contains 3 parent folders called "My Video", My Music" and "My Photos"?
Click to expand...
Yes. You can't "see" them unless you select the relevant mode in Media >> Media (yellow), and everything CF is only to do with My Video (the Humax is crap at music and photos). You will see them if you access the file system by FTP, SMB/NFS, or using the command line via Telnet or the webshell package.

inspiredron said:
Third: The copying process is already about a third through and will finish if I leave it overnight. If, as is already happening, the recordings are all being copied into "My Video" and assuming that I can somehow substantiate that the format did make the two housekeeping partitions as well as the recording partition than why cannot I simply delete the folders that contain the copied housekeeping files that appear to be in the recordings partition?
Click to expand...
If you want, and if everything is where you want it, fine. The copy process will only be copying video recordings anyway.

inspiredron said:
Fourth: Your recommendation seems to indicate that I will have to reconstruct the "Series" folders manually ("repeat for recordings in folders") or will "red" select a complete folder for copying?
Click to expand...
The latter, if you do it right.

inspiredron said:
Fifth: I presume that to wipe the disk I format again and not mark red all files and folders followed by OPT+ >> Delete to avoid fragmentation?
Click to expand...
Easy enough to reformat, why do anything else?

inspiredron said:
Sixth: Where does Web-if install? In one of the housekeeping partitions or in the firmware memory?
Click to expand...
Housekeeping.
 
Thanks very much for your very clear responses - it seems that I was worrying about nothing and it was just that the "auto-copy" process copied the Housekeeping files in the housekeeping partitions into the recordings partition - which seems very strange. It was the presence of housekeeping alongside recordings that made me doubt whether the partitioning had occurred.
I can confirm that at least some of the housekeeping files and folders have been copied into the parent folder of "My Video". I have not done a careful comparison while the hard disks are hard at work copying files but a casual glance looked as if Partitions 1 and 3 had been copied before moving onto the big stuff in Partition 2.

Thanks again
Ron
 
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