Research Opportunities on HD-FOX T2

[Black Hole]

I have a few questions that somebody with an HD-FOX and time on their hands might like to try to answer. It will add to the collective knowledge base.

1. If the hidden .tsr folder is copied (or recreated) from a Humax-formatted Ext3 external HDD to a non-Humax Ext3 HDD, does the second HDD suddenly become recordable?

2. The unmodded HD/HDR-FOX can't write to an NTFS HDD. Modding the HDR- and installing ntfs-3g onto the internal HDD makes NTFS drives writable. Tricky to do that with an HD- (no internal HDD) unless ntfs-3g can be installed in the flash along with the CF (Custom Firmware) - which at the moment it isn't - or you run another drive alongside to hold the MSP through a USB port expander. An NTFS drive is readable before mods, so suppose the /mod directory is copied onto it by other means (ntfs-3g resides in the /mod directory), and then activated in the WebIF. Is it possible for the HD-FOX to boot, read an external NTFS HDD to load up the services, and then afterwards have write access to the NTFS drive?

3. If 1 and 2 are true, then does putting a .tsr directory on the NTFS drive make it recordable???

 

[Splog]

Hi,

I though I'd have a look in to this but I haven't got far with it yet.

1.
On a freshly HD-Fox formatted HDD there are 2 folders and 3 files. The .tsr folder is one of the folders but I'm not 100% sure that it's the key to an HDD formatted on a PC being recordable on the HD-Fox without the HD-Fox having to do its own reformatting first.

The folders on a freshly HD-Fox formatted HDD are:

/Video - New recordings are placed in here.
/.tsr - I've read elsewhere that this stands for 'Time Shift Recording'.​

and the files are:

/epgsavedata​

/.tsr/0.nts - in case it's not clear the '0' is a zero​

/.tsr/0.ts​

The only thing I've found so far is that an HDD that is formatted and set to be recordable on the HD-Fox can have the Video folder and the .tsr folder deleted (on a PC) and the HDD will still be set as the recordable HDD next time it is plugged in to the HD-Fox. Both the folders are quietly recreated by the HD-Fox.

I'll do a bit of experimenting with the HDD formatted on the PC and various folders/files copied across when I get time.

 

[Black Hole]

The reason I brought up the .tsr folder (didn't know it was the time shift buffer at the time of writing) was that somebody reported success getting a non-humax Ext3 drive to "work" by copying a .tsr folder onto it.

Thanks for picking this up, I'm sure it will be of value to somebody.

 

[af123]

2. The unmodded HD/HDR-FOX can't write to an NTFS HDD. Modding the HDR- and installing ntfs-3g onto the internal HDD makes NTFS drives writable. Tricky to do that with an HD- (no internal HDD) unless ntfs-3g can be installed in the flash along with the CF (Custom Firmware) - which at the moment it isn't - or you run another drive alongside to hold the MSP through a USB port expander. An NTFS drive is readable before mods, so suppose the /mod directory is copied onto it by other means (ntfs-3g resides in the /mod directory), and then activated in the WebIF. Is it possible for the HD-FOX to boot, read an external NTFS HDD to load up the services, and then afterwards have write access to the NTFS drive?

Embedding NTFS support into the custom firmware shouldn't be hard. I'll look at doing an NTFS version when I have time.

 

[Splog]

I'll do a bit of experimenting with the HDD formatted on the PC and various folders/files copied across when I get time.

I've done a little bit of experimenting and I haven't learnt anything useful. I've been testing with a 250GB disc and I've formatted (ext3) a few times, including creating a partition table and a partitions. Each time I tried, the HD-Fox allowed me to set it as the recording HDD without the humax having to format it first. This is in total contrast to my efforts with my 2TB HDD a few months ago where after trying every which way of partitioning and formatting the only thing that allowed me to use the HDD with the humax was to copy the files mentioned in a previous post.

The aim of the thread was to see if we could record to an ntfs formatted HDD. I formatted the HDD and copied the mod folder (with ntfs-3g installed) and the other folders/files but the HD-Fox didn't allow me to set it as the recordable HDD.

 

[Black Hole]

Even negative news is a result. Thanks for trying.

Interesting what you say about an Ext3 being recordable. It all adds to the sum knowledge.