Swapping Hard Drives in a Humax PVR

barrykap

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Hi

I have a Humax CI 8100 PVR satbox and I fitted a 120GB IDE hard Drive to it. It has been performing perfectly for a few years now, but the Drive has become full and I wondered rather than copying off it to a DVD or tape, could I in fact get a new HD and fit that. Later on if I again swapped drives back to the older one, would it pick up the HD contents again? ie Can a Hard Disk be swapped at will without losing any content?

Thanks.

Barry.
 

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barrykap said:
Hi

I have a Humax CI 8100 PVR satbox and I fitted a 120GB IDE hard Drive to it. It has been performing perfectly for a few years now, but the Drive has become full and I wondered rather than copying off it to a DVD or tape, could I in fact get a new HD and fit that. Later on if I again swapped drives back to the older one, would it pick up the HD contents again? ie Can a Hard Disk be swapped at will without losing any content?

Thanks.

Barry.

I suppose you could use Norton Ghost to copy the entire drive to the new one, but I have no idea what the file system is on PVR boxes, so I'm not sure if it would work or not. This is useful on PCs when you fit a new hard drive so you can copy literally everything in one go, that's files, Operating System, programs etc, and use the new drive as though you had never replaced the old one... :)

This would mean you'd need to connect the drives to your PC of course, but it's pretty easy though!!!

As for burning off onto DVD, you'd have a lot of DVD's if the 120GB drive is full!!! :D
 

barrykap

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The problem is not to copy to a new drive, but to simply retain the old drive to connect up again later. eg; Start a new drive with new recordings, then when I fancy seeing some of the older stuff I take out the 'new' drive, connect the 'old drive again and use it as if nothing happened. Then will replace the new drive again later and carry on recording. ie just like swapping floppy/CD disks.

I suppose the only way is to try it. But once I take this full drive out I will be disapointed if I have effectively thrown everything away by disconnecting it :-)
 

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I am not able to speak from experience of a PVR but if something is recorded on a hard drive you should be able to view it at any time you decide to connect it.
 

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Thanks for the encouragemnet Topper :-)

Just wish someone else who has actually TRIED this sort of thing would also post to say it works.

I'll get sone dutch courage down me sometime and have a go!

Barry.
 

barrykap

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Well, I have found out that I can take out the present hard disk and replace it later and still retain all the data, but what I can't do at the moment is utilise a new drive I have. It is identical to the one already being used, but having bought the new drive off ebay the seller said that he has formatted it. So when I fitted it to the CI-8100 it first came up 'drive error' then no way could I get to the RECORD section in the menu to format it as this 'RECORD menu item is not there. So it is not allowing anything to do with this new disk. It will accept the old one if I re-install it again and the RECORD menu item comes back again.

It seems that once a hard disk is formatted Dos then it will not work in the CI-8100.

Anyone know how to 'nullify' the formatted disk? ie So it returns it to it's non-formatted state?

Thanks for any advice.

barry.
 

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barrykap said:
Anyone know how to 'nullify' the formatted disk? ie So it returns it to it's non-formatted state?

Thanks for any advice.

barry.

FDISK, usually comes on a windows98 startup disk (available here: _http://bootdisk.com ), use this to delete the partition table whilst in your PC, then pop it in your box and see what it does... :)
 

barrykap

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Thanks 2CVBLOKE

I downloaded a W98 boot disk and Fdisked the drive.

At first it seemed to work in the Humax and displayed the 'initialising Hard Disk...' message, plus the RECORD option was showing in the menu.

I could even format the drive in the Humax, which alarmingly only took less than a second!

But when I tried to record a programme it came up with 'Hard Drive Error' and it went through a reboot sequence. When it came back on, the RECORD menu option was missing, hence it does not now recognise the drive. If I switch off at the mains and back on, it again finds the drive but immediately loses it again when I try to record on it.

The drive I have fitted is IDENTICAL to the one I took out, a Maxor Diamond max 120GB IDE.

The only difference between the two being when I bought the first drive, it was untouched brand new and so unformatted. This 'new' one is second-hand and had been used in a Dos/Windows sytem. So even afer removing partitions using Fdisk, it doesn't see to nullify it enough for the Humax. Unless it is a faulty drive? But it was recognised OK in my PC.

Barry.
 

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But Barry make sure the shorting tags are connected the same on the new hard drive this will ensure that it is operating in the same mode. In other words (although I do not know this) I suspect the drives will have to be set as master unless the PVR is capable of having two drives. It may not be the answer but is worth checking.

Also when you say you Fdisked the drive, what option did you choose?
Did you make a non DOS partition or a DOS partition? if the latter did you make it active?

The formatting should have taken quite some time.
What does the manual say?
 

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Going back to the FDISK'ing, did you delete the partition(s) completely? :confused

I've never actually used a PVR myself (closest I've got is the OnDemand on VirginTV, acts like a PVR but it's all streamed), so I'm not 100% sure how they work, but as far as I know the reciever just takes the drive completely unformatted & unpartitioned and it does the work for you (hence the Initialising options)...
 

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To answer both, I do know the drives have to be set as master in a Satbox PVR so I ensured the drive was set accordingly with the jumper.

Fdisk;- I could not remove a Dos partion as it said there was no Dos partition for some reason so I used the non-Dos partition removal, which went OK.

If as 2CVbloke says, it matters not whether the drive is formatted or not, it then seems a problem with the particular disk. Maybe it IS faulty then.

I will re-try it in the PC and see if it formats OK.

Thanks for your input.

barry.
 
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