Tinkermoche
New Member
Hi,
This is my first post (except I had a userid years ago that seems to have expired - my own fault for so rarely dipping a toe).
It's intended to be a cautionary tale (sorry) as well as a request for help:
I recently bought a second T2 (1TB) intending to try the custom OS, but it turned out that the box was a lemon and the HDD was so full of holes that it failed the HDD test, didn't respond to formatting and crashed in the first week.
I'd had so many problems** getting this far (finally! a box from eBay that nearly worked) that I decided to keep it and partition around the holes. This relatively straightforward process has worked well for me before but in this case I wanted at least one partition larger than 300GB even if I couldn't use the the rest of the disk - but there was no such gap between holes so I decided to retire it to the PC comeinhandy pile and buy a new one for the Fox.
I read the thread about consumer disks but they were so expensive... and I didn't want to buy another Effingham Seagate anyway (especially since SeaTools was about as much use as...).
I decided any overheating issues would be solved by going for a 1TB 2.5" unit, and I would just risk the possible slow degradation even if I have to retire another TB in due course (spare 2.5s are so much more useful and convenient than 3.5s, especially in USB caddies). It wasn't difficult to make a bracket to fit inside the old drawer thing (I took vibration issues into account but the 2.5 had almost removed that problem anyway).
So, it passed all the checks and everything was hunky dory until I tried to transfer some "test" recordings (Glastonbury 2016) from my PC back to the new disk after (stupidly) I'd put the whole thing back together - meaning I tried to use a USB disk instead of the direct serial ATA I'd used to take them off the old disk (also, some of them may have been off the new one while I was testing that).
Anyway only the SD files worked even though I duly foxy'd all the HD .hmt files.
Before I tear the box open again to do a serial ATA transfer I'm hoping you guys can confirm that it will fool the Fox T2 into thinking the files are 100% its own babies??
Even better, is there a way to fool it without dismantling it again? Preferably without a MSc in Linux?
One more thing. Is there any other device apart from Foxes, 2000s and 1800s that will allow me to fill USB disks with films that will play on anything? I mean without networking. I prefer actual PVRs but I'm happy to use a set-top box paired with a USB if I can get the same 'open' files. Mainly because we use an old 9200 on the remaining T1 channels and it may need replacing soon.
Cheers.
**PS. The first box from eBay turned out to be a FoxSat, and that seller "wouldn't believe" me until I sent photos. He also "wouldn't believe" it said so on his own label on his own plain box he had sent it in. The whole process took 2 weeks to resolve, and left me very short of tuners during a sweet-spot of TV dramas. I suspect he had a better offer and needed a smokescreen against eBay's ratings.
This is my first post (except I had a userid years ago that seems to have expired - my own fault for so rarely dipping a toe).
It's intended to be a cautionary tale (sorry) as well as a request for help:
I recently bought a second T2 (1TB) intending to try the custom OS, but it turned out that the box was a lemon and the HDD was so full of holes that it failed the HDD test, didn't respond to formatting and crashed in the first week.
I'd had so many problems** getting this far (finally! a box from eBay that nearly worked) that I decided to keep it and partition around the holes. This relatively straightforward process has worked well for me before but in this case I wanted at least one partition larger than 300GB even if I couldn't use the the rest of the disk - but there was no such gap between holes so I decided to retire it to the PC comeinhandy pile and buy a new one for the Fox.
I read the thread about consumer disks but they were so expensive... and I didn't want to buy another Effingham Seagate anyway (especially since SeaTools was about as much use as...).
I decided any overheating issues would be solved by going for a 1TB 2.5" unit, and I would just risk the possible slow degradation even if I have to retire another TB in due course (spare 2.5s are so much more useful and convenient than 3.5s, especially in USB caddies). It wasn't difficult to make a bracket to fit inside the old drawer thing (I took vibration issues into account but the 2.5 had almost removed that problem anyway).
So, it passed all the checks and everything was hunky dory until I tried to transfer some "test" recordings (Glastonbury 2016) from my PC back to the new disk after (stupidly) I'd put the whole thing back together - meaning I tried to use a USB disk instead of the direct serial ATA I'd used to take them off the old disk (also, some of them may have been off the new one while I was testing that).
Anyway only the SD files worked even though I duly foxy'd all the HD .hmt files.
Before I tear the box open again to do a serial ATA transfer I'm hoping you guys can confirm that it will fool the Fox T2 into thinking the files are 100% its own babies??
Even better, is there a way to fool it without dismantling it again? Preferably without a MSc in Linux?
One more thing. Is there any other device apart from Foxes, 2000s and 1800s that will allow me to fill USB disks with films that will play on anything? I mean without networking. I prefer actual PVRs but I'm happy to use a set-top box paired with a USB if I can get the same 'open' files. Mainly because we use an old 9200 on the remaining T1 channels and it may need replacing soon.
Cheers.
**PS. The first box from eBay turned out to be a FoxSat, and that seller "wouldn't believe" me until I sent photos. He also "wouldn't believe" it said so on his own label on his own plain box he had sent it in. The whole process took 2 weeks to resolve, and left me very short of tuners during a sweet-spot of TV dramas. I suspect he had a better offer and needed a smokescreen against eBay's ratings.
