Replacement HDD not detected

[Black Hole]

Just to add a little bit of new information to an old thread. I have been helping somebody over on Digital Spy who had bought a Seagate ST3500312CS with P/N 9GW132-012 and of course it didn't work in the Humax. He has now bought a Seagate ST3500312CS P/N 9GW132-075 and that does work.

Does that mean the particular "Humax" in question needed SATA2 rather than SATA1?

 

[MartinLiddle]

Does that mean the particular "Humax" in question needed SATA2 rather than SATA1?

Yes; for the avoidance of doubt it was an HDR-FOX T2.

 

[John1212]

Old thread but I have just come up against the same issue. My HDRFOX-T2 disk started giving errors and I had an old (seemingly identical) ST3500312CS 500Gbyte drive which I thought I would use. The drive worked fine in Windows and also as an external USB drive on the Humax but refused to be recognised as an internal drive. (No erasing, pre-formatting etc made any difference)

I had labelled it as being from an old PVR9300T.

Replacement drive
ST3500312CS s/no: 9VV5STP6 F/W : SC13 P/N: 9GW132-012

The existing failing drive was
ST3500312CS s/no: 6VVH6FHF F/W : SC13 P/N: 9GW132-191

HDPARM and SMARTCTL for the existing drive show

• Gen1 signaling speed (1.5Gb/s)
• Gen2 signaling speed (3.0Gb/s)

SATA Version is: SATA 2.6, 3.0 Gb/s (current: 3.0 Gb/s)

HDPARM and SMARTCTL for the ex PVR9300T drive show

* Gen1 signaling speed (1.5Gb/s)

SATA Version is: SATA 2.6, 1.5 Gb/s (current: 1.5 Gb/s)

i.e. no mention of 3.0Gb/s


So it would 'appear' that the HDRFOX-T2 checks the drive capability if it is internal and ignores it if it is not Gen2 but allows it for external drives to allow backups.

I haven't gone through the process of trying various kernels, this is with
Custom firmware version: 3.13 (build 4028)
Humax Version: 1.03.12 (kernel HDR_CFW_3.13)

Neither drives has any jumpers fitted but normally the jumper would force it to Gen1 mode anyway.

Pay me to be cheap but I don't have that much on the disk these days. Anyway, now bought a 1TB WD drive which of course is fine. Had to enter SAFE mode to format it, which I had forgotten about.....

 

[Black Hole]

but allows it for external drives to allow backups.

External drives??

As an external drive, you would be operating it via a USB to SATA interface. The Humax hardware/firmware is therefore insulated from any vagaries in the SATA implementation. It's not a question of "allowing", it just doesn't work on the internal SATA.

 

[John1212]

Yes I assumed people would understand that 'external' meant via the USB interface. Via the internal SATA interface either the hardware or system must be detecting the disk as Gen1 and not revealing the disk to the user interface for formatting when it is only Gen1 capable, hence the quotes around "allowing". No such limitation exists via the USB interface.

I only added this information as a reminder / warning for anyone else trying to do the same thing and how they can check via SMARTCTL and HDPARM if they encounter an issue and can still use the drive via USB for backup if they want to.

 

[Black Hole]

Via the internal SATA interface either the hardware or system must be detecting the disk as Gen1

That's what I'm quibbling about. If a SATA controller isn't "gen1" compatible, it's not a case of detection – it simply won't fall back to gen1. There's no decision making involved.