External Hardrive

[microchick]

Re: External Hardrive

Sorry to heard about your hard drive and the data lost. Is there any plug in available for your box for connecting the hard drive? Can you use any 3rd Party softwares to format the drive?

[bokkie]

Re: External Hardrive

Could there be a loose connnection which is causing it to short or malfunction?
Strange that it's happened twice now.

[pan1300]

Re: External Hardrive

yeah, known problem with these boxes, before had the same problem with 1TB, worked good for some months know with the 500GB. I knew not all brands work well, but I really thought it would be ok now. Will try again and hope it lasts ...
Think the HDD is ok ; I use FAT32Formatter to format -> any ideas of other freesoft to format to FAT32??

[bokkie]

Re: External Hardrive

Maybe you should start to regularly backup your hard drive. So that if it goes wrong again at least you don't lose everything.

[pan1300]

Re: External Hardrive

Maybe you should start to regularly backup your hard drive. So that if it goes wrong again at least you don't lose everything.

Yes, theoretically you're right ; however practically ...
I'm always afraid to take the HDD off the box (always fear it won't reconnect again afterwards) and on my pc and laptops I don't have enough space to put the files on, so even an extra HDD would be necessary ; also the files come in .TS and one recording has eg up to 3-4 files ...

[bokkie]

Re: External Hardrive

Have you tried connecting your hard drive to your pc to see if it recognises it.
That way you can a least tell if the fault lies with your hard drive or stb.
maybe you should setup a network so that everything can be backed up easily.

[microchick]

Re: External Hardrive

try not using any third party software for formatting. Just straight away format it with the windows built in utility.

[bokkie]

Re: External Hardrive

I have had 2 hard drives and both went straight into the receiver from the box.
Initialised them in receiver and they were good to go.

I know it's a poor alternative, but maybe you should get a usb stick to record onto and then transfer, via pc, onto your hard drive.
That is a last resort of course.

[microchick]

Re: External Hardrive

@pan: Why do you have to format in FAT32? Give a try to NTFS. Most of the modern receivers including cheapos have been programmed in Windows Xp and later. NTFS was one of the XP qualities. XP never recognised to be installed on a FAT32 Hard Drive Partition.
Consider changing your format system to NTFS.

[juekra]

Re: External Hardrive

Hello,

I think the best solution is a NAS. It's more expensive but you can conect it to the network (so other devices can conect too), can can configure it with different Raid configuraties (faster of redundant data)

[microchick]

Re: External Hardrive

There are some cheap NAS enclosures available online. As you already have a hard drive so just buy an enclosure and use your existing hard drive in it. But again, if you have a cheap receiver then it will not record to a network drive. I might be wrong!
Before you do anythingtry NTFS as suggested earlier.

[bokkie]

Re: External Hardrive

I don't think it's anything to do with the way it's formatted, as the stb has recognised it and it's been working for a couple of weeks.
That's the reason I asked if maybe there was a loose connection, causing it to short and malfunction.
After you format it again is it then recognised by the stb?

[pan1300]

Re: External Hardrive

hi

Thanks for all your replies.

I'll try later on (this evening or next days) ; I'll check again, but the box (protek) only recognises FAT32, but will try again with NTFS. HDD is recognised in pc/laptop, but says it's not formatted, as far as I know I can only format it with my pc's/laptops in NTFS or something like 'ex-FAT' -> don't know that, and doesn't work either ; just after formatting to NTFS I can format it into FAT32.

[microchick]

Re: External Hardrive

Thats true because you are using a NT based PC which has got windos XP or later windows on it.

[mahrkpat]

Re: External Hardrive

yeah, known problem with these boxes, before had the same problem with 1TB, worked good for some months know with the 500GB. I knew not all brands work well, but I really thought it would be ok now. Will try again and hope it lasts ...
Think the HDD is ok ; I use FAT32Formatter to format -> any ideas of other freesoft to format to FAT32??

I have used EaseUS Partition Master Home which is freeware without any problems for formatting hard drives for my openbox, WII, and t.v.

_http://www.partition-tool.com/download.htm