Problem - Upgrading Hard Drive to 1TB in Humax Foxsat HDR - help?

Borgman100 · 24-04-2013 09:59AM #1

Hi All,

My 320gb Humax HDR hard drive has been playing up recently. I read lots of information on various sites about swapping and upgrading the hard drive. The box is out of warranty so i had no issue in removing the top cover. I purchased a Western Digital WD10EADS 1Tb drive as I read on numerous sites this was one that had been proved to be compatible. The swapping of the drive was the easy bit.

The problem has been that on start up of the box, after the boot screen, there is a notification that the hard drive needs to be formatted. This was expected, as I have read that the box will carry out the format automatically. So I press ok and the formatting starts. 'Please wait' and a whirling circle appears on the tv screen, so i know the box is doing something. On the display on box itself it reads 'initialize parti' which I assume means initialising partitions.

However nothing then happens. I have left it working in this state for upto a couple of hours ( as I don't know how long the process should take).

has anyone any ideas? I read that the hard Drive need to be formatted to linux Ext3, which the box should automatically be doing. I was wondering is there anyway I could pre-format the hard drive by connecting to my laptop pc? and then installing it ready formatted? would this work and if so is there a program that I need to download to my laptop to be able to format in linux ext3.

I thought I was pretty competent at this type of thing, but this was me stuck!

Thanks in advance

Borgman 100

excollier · 24-04-2013 06:48PM

I used a WD10EURX 1TB drive, and needed a jumper but it worked immediately, like in around a few minutes.
The one you have sounds like the wrong one, but I'm not sure.

Borgman100 · 25-04-2013 06:22AM

Thanks for the response. I tried again last night and left it running. It stayed on the 'initialising parti' for nearly an hour but then kicked into life. A check on HDD through the system menu shows the capacity of the video partition has increased to 900GB + so it's definitely formatted the drive.

Problem is now that when I recorded a program and went to play it back, the playback is totally jumpy and unwatchable. Very glitchy. But it definitely recorded.

Why did you use a jumper? I read up more last night and it said that the new HD run speed might be at 300 something, so might be too fast for the box? Would a jumper slow the speed?

I hope this makes sense. Thanks again.

excollier · 25-04-2013 11:34AM

It depends, if it's Advanced Format, then it will need a jumper, at least mine did, but mine was also SATA 3, and a jumper was needed on pins 5/6, worked perfectly. I suspect your hard drive is incompatible, but I'm not really sure.
Read here:
http://www.avforums.com/forums/freesat/1697065-new-hdd.html

Borgman100 · 25-04-2013 11:42AM

Thanks again for the input.

I chose this drive after reading the following link
http://www.astra2.org/harddrive.html

I am going to call out to Maplins and get a jumper to try it. Might be a cheap fix! Fingers crossed!

excollier · 25-04-2013 12:47PM

Fair enough, I hope it works for you, you will be aaamzed by the jump in storage, mine never gets above 20% full, and my old 320 GB drive sits in a dock behind the tv, and I am still slowly watching and erasing it, so I will have 320GB of extra storage for my computers, some day!
Be sure you put the jumpers on the correct pins, not sure what your drive will need, probably the same.

25-04-2013 03:13PM

The OP's drive isn't an AF drive (the EADS isn't but the EARS and EARX are). So the jumper on pins 5-6 should be the only one needed. This limits the interface to SATA/150.

Borgman100 · 26-04-2013 05:51AM

Thanks all. After your advice I read up more and by checking the label on the HDD it seems that all is needed is to jumper pins 5&6 as you both have suggested.

I came across this which explains it clearly
http://wdc.custhelp.com/app/answers/detail/search/1/a_id/1337/c/130/p/227,294

Thanks again for you help...off to Maplins today so!!

excollier · 26-04-2013 07:23AM

Good stuff, a fix for pennies!

Problem - Upgrading Hard Drive to 1TB in Humax Foxsat HDR - help?

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