USB External HDD - write protected

S

Sam1993

New Member
Hi All

I have a USB Seagate External HDD connected to my Humax Fox 2. It was working fine but I can now no longer write to the USB HDD.
It appears that the HDD is write protected.

I am running the custom firmware.

Any idea how I can remove write protection?
 
Sam1993 said:
Any idea how I can remove write protection?
Click to expand...
That would depend on the reason that it appears to be write protected.
For example, if the external uses the NTFS filesystem and you removed the NTFS-3g package from your custom firmware that would give it the appearance of being write protected while attached to the HDR-FOX T2. In that instance the solution would be to add back in the NTFS-3g package.
 
Hi

Thanks for the reply.

The Seagate external USB drive is USB3 and is formatted ext3. It is connected to the Humax via a powered USB hub. I also have a Toshiba USB3 HDD attached to the hub which is also ext3. The Toshiba is 1G, Seagate 2G. The Toshiba HDD is working fine.
 
How are you trying to write to it? And how are you determining it's RO?
Can you issue the mount|grep /sd command from a command prompt (telnet or similar) and report the output?
 
prpr said:
How are you trying to write to it? And how are you determining it's RO?
Can you issue the mount|grep /sd command from a command prompt (telnet or similar) and report the output?
Click to expand...
Thanks for the reply.

I have tried to copy a file from the internal drive to usb Seagate drive using the Humax interface on the TV and it does not appear to try to copy the file.

I also tried to copy a file using the CLI over a telnet session and it said that the drive was write protected.

here is the output of the command - drive1 is the Seagate USB HDD.

humax# mount | grep /sd
/dev/sda1 on /media/drive1 type ext3 (ro,data=ordered)
/dev/sdb1 on /media/drive2 type ext3 (rw,data=ordered)
/dev/sdc1 on /mnt/hd1 type ext3 (rw,data=ordered)
/dev/sdc2 on /mnt/hd2 type ext3 (rw,data=ordered)
/dev/sdc3 on /mnt/hd3 type ext3 (rw,data=ordered)
/dev/sdc2 on /mnt/hd2/My\040Video/[ModSettings] type ext3 (rw,data=ordered)
/dev/sdb1 on /mnt/hd2/My\040Video/usb-drive2 type ext3 (rw,data=ordered)
/dev/sda1 on /mnt/hd2/My\040Video/usb-drive1 type ext3 (ro,data=ordered)
humax#
 
Let's assume that
  • there's no secret RO switch on the drive.
  • a writable /etc/fstab with an entry for /dev/sda1 that specifies mounting RO hasn't somehow appeared.

If the filesystem is badly mangled (but still recognisable), it won't mount RW. Has it met fsck recently?
 
/df said:
Let's assume that
  • there's no secret RO switch on the drive.
  • a writable /etc/fstab with an entry for /dev/sda1 that specifies mounting RO hasn't somehow appeared.

If the filesystem is badly mangled (but still recognisable), it won't mount RW. Has it met fsck recently?
Click to expand...
Thanks for the reply.

I suspect that you are probably correct in that the filesystem is corrupted as there are a few files with i/o errors.
Bit stuck though, the fsck utility is not on my Humax and is not one of the available packages.

Any suggestions how I could proceed?

Thanks again.
 
If you have a Linux PC, connect the USB drive to that and run the fsck or e2fsck (which the former will invoke) command on it; the options for the latter would be like those below, but you'll have to become superuser; or in a GUI you may have a tool such as Disks or_GParted_ that includes a filesystem check option.

On the Humax, go into a telnet session. Suppose the suspect ext3fs disk is /dev/sda1 and is mounted.
Code: 
umount /dev/sda1
abduco -c fsck e2fsck -p /dev/sda1
The abduco command runs the disk check in a terminal session called fsck. If your connection fails during the disk check, just go into a new telnet session and abduco -a fsck to continue. On a Linux PC, you don't need to do this (and abduco or a similar program might have to be installed), unless in a GUI you fear accidentally closing your terminal window.

If the output with the -p (preen = fix simple errors) option shows unfixed errors, back up any sufficiently precious content from the drive.

Then drop the 16 ton weight on it (-y = agree to all fix-ups):
Code: 
abduco -A fsck e2fsck -y /dev/sda1
 
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