Has anybody successfully put a 2TB drive in a Humax Freesat plus receiver ? (are they SATA drives ?)

They have but they need to be formatted before installation (The Humax cannot format them to 2TB) and, apparently, it slows down the display of the 'media' list.

(I'd like to know if it slows down that display only if the box is quite full or does it do it at all times.)

Yes and Yes. The drives are Consumer Electronics sata AV drives

A 1TB drive swap is straightforward as the hdr will format the drive for you. For larger drives you have to set up the FS yourself. Some who have installed larger drives say that the delay in bringing up the media list due to the large nos of files is pretty frustrating

For a large drive, you're best formatting it with a limited number of inodes, using the "-T largefile4" option to mkfs.ext3.

This will have the effects of:[LIST=1][*]Increasing available recording space.[*]Speeding up file access.[/LIST]
A standard ext3 filesystem will be set up for hundreds of thousands of files (as you would have on a PC), but on a PVR there are usually only a few hundred. Having the extra slots available wastes space and spreads things round a bit.

Thanks for the replies, I'll give it a go (as soon as my new drive arrives), and post the results. one other question, can a second external drive be added via the USB port?

Yes, I have a 1TB internal drive externally mounted in a esata/usb drop in cradle and a second in a similar cradle connected to the rear usb port. Both were formatted by the hdr so are interchangeable. A third cradle allows either to be connected by esata to my laptop. You can't record directly to usb connected drive you have to record and then copy/move.

I received a WD10EARS for Xmas Graham and i note some reservations on the drive about performance mods..
Nowhere in the excellent topic on drive replacement is there mention of such by you or others..
so as a cautious old dodderer ..can i just ignore the reservations please?..
The HUmax is just over 1years old now so i am assuming it is out of guarantee?..
Ta ever so
Stan

It looks as if the drive is a desktop design rather than a AV specced one.

http://www.wdc.com/wdproducts/librar...178-771117.pdf

I would be inclined to use it as a usb archive drive rather than the main recording drive. Unless someone has tried one as the main drive that is

WD's AV range of drives is here

http://www.wdc.com/en/products/internal/av/

Many hdr's came with a 2yr warranty depending on where you bought it from. You could use the drive using USB to make space on the original drive if you have a 2yr warranty.

The WD10EARS is what I am using - It's one of their green range (5.4 Watts when active) Power is one of the key attributes. While not coming up to the AV range (max capacity 500GB) power specs I am well pleased with it.
Other earlier models of this WD drive have been mentioned in the upgrade thread.

I have had a Samsung Spinpoint 1Tb PC drive fitted for over 2 years, no problems, no noise, no overheating.
Are you now AVF free? I gave some backing as I thought the Mod was very sharp on a few ocasions but he is sticking to his guns, he cant see the problem!

I am not a member of the AVF, otherwise I too would have supported Graham. That particular mod has been a nuisance for some time.

Hopefully the Mods will tolerate a cheeky input here..
I have no idea what AVF stands for BUT
i ran a search for 'Video REDO' on this site and nowt comes up except films etc..
Where is the cheapest place to buy please? if it;s still the cats whiskers as it seems to be regularly mnetioned..
Ta..

Stan

It's videoredo

http://www.videoredo.com/en/index.htm

Received my 2TB drive for the Humax PVR (freesat), and have installed it in my PC to format it. However I am only given the option of NTFS ! the OS on my PC is XP pro......what am I missing ? Will the drive work in the Humax if it is formatted in the NTFS file system ?

You have to partition and format it EXT3 using Linux.

http://www.avforums.com/forums/pvrs-...l#post13137468

Thanks for that Graham, Ill have to dig out an old PC, and put linux on it, and try and figure out how to connect a sata drive to a PC without a sata connection.....only kidding....Ill get a mate with a linux system to do it. Thanks for the info

Just make a linux boot CD for your existing PC. You can boot a PC into linux from usb or CD without making any changes to it. Lots of free flavours around.

I did mine with ubuntu http://www.ubuntu.com/

You don't even have to install it - just use the partition creator thats part of the install, only takes a few minutes to setup.,

The USB drive install is the best - if your bios lets you boot into it.

Managed to format my 2TB drive using a PC with Linux, as suggested I used the ext3 option, only took 15 mins to my surprise (it took nearly 5 hours to do an identical drive in windows xp). Ill tag a loads of programmes to record back to back, 2 at a time and see how the receiver manages gets on over a 10 hour period, ill post the findings (hopefully it wont be too slow when pulling up recorded media)

Trying to do mine, samsung f4 2tb, downloaded ubuntu, boot from cd, partition the drive to ext3.

When i put it in the foxsat, still says needs to initialize partition?

Any ideas? tried one big partition, also two smaller ones, still same

Try the bit about fdisk from here

http://www.avforums.com/forums/frees...ml#post8348697