Hard Disk File System investigation for the Magnavox 537, 535, 533, 515, 513, 2160A, 2160, 2080 &... - Page 5

I'm not sure you could ever really buy it. I got a copy of it 7 yr ago when I bought a Panasonic external DVD burner. It seems they only gave it out with burners. For several years after I looked online to try an buy an update and had no luck at all.

That's a good clue. So it looks like that program was something like freeware... would you mind to check that? I would really like to have a copy, only for test purposes.

Time to maybe bump the thread?

I just read thru it. Yall like a bunch of old dogs gnawing at a bone. I like it! I like it!

New 537 1tb owner considering expanding storage to an external drive. Or is that another thread? Way I hear it, I should be able to pop the original drive out of the Maggie and just run a SATA cable to an outboard dock. Most of those (reasonably priced anyway) are USB, so I'd also have to use a SATA/USB adapter. I was figuring to use a dock/duplicator with 2tb drives that I'd cold swap as needed. Burn a paper catalog from EXCEL and just number the drives, then pick a title number to select a specific movie.

Will this work? Any preferences for docks?

* I did see mention of the cumbersome load times for the index on the larger HDDs. That would have been a show stopper for me, but I stumbled across a neet trick that shortcuts that.

- Click PLAY so the HDD is running. It'll just play whatever was last loaded.
- Click DISPLAY
- Hit ENTER
- Key in the title number you want to watch
- Hit ENTER
- Enjoy!

The title loads right up instead of having to do the thumbnail thing. With only 40 titles on mine, that's already as exciting as watching paint dry.

No big rush for a response, It'll take me a while to fill the OEM 1tb drive which shows around 680 hours available at LP. More than happy with the results at that speed as I'm strictly an SD kinda guy except for sporting events where it's nice to read jersey numbers. I figure once that's full, pop the drive, put it in the dock/duplicator and let er rip. Throw another drive in the dock and click "duplicate" for a cloned backup. Pull that and throw it in the fire safe. Now that I've got a full drive, and a backup, pull those and add another blank drive for more storage. Repeat as needed. I Like the WD Greens, so I expect I'd stick with those, and they should all look alike to the Maggie.

Also, formatting and drive sizes ... Will I need to format a new drive on a PC first so it has a working file system, or will the Maggie do all the dirty work if I swap in a blank drive? Which file system if I need to format externally first? And will the 2tb drives work? I've heard there's some firmware changes that need to happen for most any OS to recognize anything bigger than that, but that should already have happened on the Maggie to support 1tb. No biggie there ... If 1tb is the limit on the 537, I can live with that. That's still a whole lotta movies.

The Maggy will do the trick by itself (VSKIP 079), since Funai uses its own file system. Also until now, nobody has tried a 2TB drive, so I don't know.

oooOOOooohhh ... I get to play guinea pig?? AWRIGHT!

As mentioned, it's only at 3tb you start running into problems on a PC, and I'm hoping that holds true for the Maggie. Here's a good write up from WD explaining the issues:

http://wdc.custhelp.com/app/answers/detail/search/1/a_id/2754/c/130/p/227,294

If I'm reading that right, and the Maggie format qualifies as a "legacy" system, it SHOULD (?) work. Theoretically of course. Maybe better if you're starting with a 537 that already has a 1tb drive from the factory. Not sure if there's any firmware issues upgrading from one of the older models or if the 2tb limit holds for any larger capacity E/IDE or SATA drive. The 999 hard limit on titles won't be an issue.

I've been planning to get a couple 2tb drives for this PC anyway, so if one were not to work in the Maggie, no loss there. I've been playing with importing and converting my old Pannie DVDr rips to the PC in MKV format. Got a working system for that (including databasing the titles on the Maggie as a bonus), so I definitely need to increase storage here.

While I'm at it, pull the Maggie's internal drive and run a SATA cable out to the 2tb drive. I'll power that with an external brick power supply that I use for doing backups. If that all works, one step closer to setting up an HDD farm.

This is turning out to be a nice winter project.

PS ... I get ONE drive working externally, my hope is that I can get a dock/duplicator that has an A/B switch on it so I can keep 2 2tb drives plugged in, and just cold swap those before powering up the Maggie. That would put around 1200 titles at my fingertips without having to do any swapping, and changing from one drive to the other should be transparent to the Maggie. Only time I'd have to swap is when I do a backup, then just shuffle drives as needed and park the spares in the fire safe.
Edited by NOSTRADIMWIT - 12/4/12 at 4:50pm

Newegg has 2TB WD Green drives on sale for $90 and free shipping.

HEY!! STOP SPENDING MY MONEY!!!

So the kids get coal in their stockings this year.

Pulled the trigger on TWO 2tb WD greens and a SATA/USB dock/duplicator. I figure to try a hard connect to just one drive first to make sure I can get a good connect and then add the dock later. As mentioned, if the 2tb is a problem, I needed those for expanding storage for my MKV rips on the PC anyway.

Also got the eSATA panel connector AND a 40" SATA cable. That will give me some flexibility in locating the dock.

Here's the dock/duplicator I went with:



StarTech SATDOCK22RE USB2.0 & eSATA Standalone Hard Drive Duplicator Dock

Still don't much care for the idea of having the open slots at the top, but I expect I'll be able to figure out a way from keeping dust and mouse droppings out of it. Maybe mount it sideways?

If it works out, I'll be getting one more setup just like it and that should take care of both the Maggie and the MKV storage ... for now. I'll need one more set of drives (at least) to rip ALL my old Pannie dvd-r disks, but I'd best let my credit card cool down for a bit first.

Anyway ... I'd best go wait by the mailbox ... (tap tap tap ... is it here nyet??)

That one looks just like this Aluratek AHDDUB100 External SATA Hard Drive Duplicator at J&R.

Well, yes and no ...

The Aluratek looks a bit grayer in the pic, so maybe it's not as photogenic ... :-}

And it's another $10 at the Egg anyway. They all come out of the same two or three factories I guess. No matter - just hoping it does the job.

Got my panel connector and cable in today, but ... fat fingered the shopping cart and got a SATA extension cable instead of the eSATA cable I really need. Can I have a dOH? I knew that I could. I just double checked the dock to make sure THAT is eSATA and hopefully I'll get it right this time.

Click. dOH! Click. dOH! : Click. dOH!

FYI - the StarTech dock DOES come with both eSATA and USB cables, but they look pretty short, so I re-ordered the longer one so I have more placement options in the video cabinet.

Quick service though ... thumbs up to CPU stuff.

That's ok ... I'm a very low level kinda guy.

Thanx ... it's on my todo list ... I'll do it next time I be Boared ...

Please do it, you're the hope of many potential 1 and 2 TB HDD buyers...

While you're waiting, I'll let you admire my red stapler ...



I figure Ken at least will appreciate that.

********

62 MOVIES and counting on the Maggie.

Test phase on my other project - MKV conversion of my old DVDs - is done. I've got around 80 titles, both real MKV rips and "Maggie Markers", stored in jRiver on the PC now, and all is working well. I'm using an external WD Passport drive for now, and have permanently assigned a drive letter to that (V for VIDEO), so swapping out to yet another dock/duplicator on the PC should be easy enough. Just disconnect the Passport, hook up the dock, copy the files over, and force the same drive letter for the dock so the jRIver database can find the files. I declare the test a success ... hazzah!

I've viewed a few titles now from both systems now and no untoward hiccups or farts. My system for identifying and finding movies on the Maggie is fast and easy, and movies stored on the PC are just point 'n watch. Good pic quality and sound, both from the PC and the Maggie, so I'm a happy camper. Get my android remote set up and working, and I may never leave the couch again ...

I always appreciate a red stapler.


Your desk is much neater than mine. It looks like I need to dust too.
Edited by Ken.F - 12/12/12 at 2:41am

Is your's real, or a copy?

Fun fact ... when the movie came out, Swingline was no longer making a red stapler. There were so many demands for one, they made an emergency run at the factory of their current model heavy duty desk job.



Main difference is the inset badge on the top instead of the print on the side.

Oh. And sorry I didn't post this earlier ... better late than never?



More on topic. Got the last of the parts in today for the great experiment. 2tb, or not 2tb, THAT is the question. Stay tuned.

It's a regular Swingline 747. I saw it at Walmart and had to have it.

I was messing around with hard drives yesterday. One of my 3TB Seagate USB external drives crapped out the day after Sandy. My power cycled off and on quickly about 10 times and now the drive can't be read. I guess I'm lucky I only lost one of five external drives. I pried open the enclosure and found a standard 3TB Barracuda SATA drive inside. I pulled a 2TB internal drive from the PC and installed the 3TB drive in it's place but no luck, it's still dead.
I discovered a bare SATA drive can be plugged into the external drive base adapter without the enclosure. The next time I have the cover off one of my recorders I'll have to try, but I doubt a Magnavox HDD can be read by Win7 over a USB cable.

Just don't forget to rip the first 100Kb...

2TB Hard Drive Transplant

Maybe too much detail for some, but I'm going under the assumption that there's not all that many 537s out there yet and things may have changed. And so ...

It begins ...

The Drive: Western Digital Green WD20EASRXSP
The Victim: Magnovox 537 (Mfg Date AUG 2012)

First off - the usual warning about breaking the warranty sticker on the back. Blah blah yada yada. I've seen posts where the mfg says it's ok to open the case so you can back up your drive before sending the Maggie in for repairs, and I have high hopes in case something goes totally fubar ... fingers crossed and proceed.

- Power down unit, remove plug from wall. (NOTE: Part of my upgrade tweaks may include swapping out the cheepo power cord for an AEC type. Something to consider if I get bored. An AEC socket does have provisions for fusing and tends to be better quality, not to mention easier to pull the machine from the cabinet for maintenance and whatever.)

- Remove top cover. Is it just me, or are there an awful lot of screws involved? Methinks the case is hurricane proof. There ARE a couple around the perimeter that don't need to be removed - just look for the cutouts in the cover.

SCARY PART!
The ribbon connector for the hard drive was hot glued to the top of the drive. My solution was to VERY CAREFULLY slide a single edge razor blade between the cable and the top of the drive and slowly rock it and push it thru the glue, keeping the edge of the blade against the drive and away from the cable surface. I tried sawing it off with dental floss (old trick for removing bumper strips and emblems from cars), but that didn't work. Anybody got a better way, be sure to post up so I don't get blamed when somebody hacks their ribbon to death.

- Dismount the OEM drive. There's three silver screws (with handy arrows pointing towards them) that hold the HDD mount to the circuit board. Remove these and carefully lift the drive still attached to the mount. Careful with the ribbon cable as it's still attached to the back of the drive.

- Remove the adapter board from the back of the drive. Just pull it off, BUT ... there IS a sticky foam pad on the side of the board away from the HDD sockets that might fight you a bit. You need to pry that side back a bit with a finger until the adhesive on the foam breaks loose from the back of the drive, then pull the board straight back off the drive connections. It's free! It's FREE!

For this experiment, I just found an old static sack from a motherboard, wrapped that around the bottom of the drive. and set it into the cavity left by the old drive. Plugged in the power/sata adapter board and hooked the Maggie back up to the video system.

- Power up. I also removed a DVD-RW that I'd left in the drive so as not to confuse things. The Maggie booted up, but I got an ERROR 48 when trying to access any of the HDD menu items. As expected. I did get a dOH! moment when I couldn't get a pic from the satellite. S-video cable goes to the IN socket on the Maggie, not the OUT, dummy!

- Ran the SKIP 079 procedure to check the physical wellness of the drive and got a screen full of OKs. So lucky me, I did manage to get that pesky cable off the drive without damage. Yahhh me.

- Powered down and back up, then hit the HDD button and recorded less than 10 seconds as recommended by the gurus in this thread. This initializes the HDD indexing and wahoo! ... got my first title in the list. Tried a couple more short shorts and those also showed in the index.

NOTE: I did NOT get any screen messages as noted in some posts when I made that first recording. Also, no shut down. Maybe a firmware change, or maybe I read it wrong. I hit record, ran 8 seconds, then stop. From there, hit the index, and there it was.

BAD NEWS? Even with everything working, the add timer screen still shows the same recording time as with the original 1tb drive. Drat? Or is this just an error in the firmware posting up an estimate based on the largest drive it was designed to work with? I suppose the only way to test this would be to fire it up recording continuously at the highest resolution and see where it rolls craps?

NEXT STEP:

Not sure what I expect to accomplish here, but I'm also running the SKIP 013 procedure to further test the drive and maybe get more info. I did make sure there were no timed events in the recording schedule first, and good thing ... it's been running for over 40 minutes now and the summary screen is looking at me stoopid like with no posted results. If it's doing a sector by sector check, I can understand that it'd take some time, and once again have my fingers crossed there's no lockup issues. I'll post back with the results.

* Now that I think on it, I suppose I should have done that with the original drive so I could compare the results, but I believe SKIP 013 is a destructive procedure and would trash the movies I've already got stored there. So I didn't. So there. Shoot me already. With luck, somebody already has that info and can post back. From what I see, it's not gonna answer many questions anyway, other than that it works.


(And no, I haven't forgotten about posting up the header info when I'm done with this ... stay tuned ...)

UPDATE > > > The SKIP 013 HDD check routine finally finished up at a bit over two hours with a full screen of OKs ... was hoping for more detail, but we work with what we got. I'll leave things as is at least overnight and then swap the original drive back in until I'm ready to do the "jack in the back" thing for an external dock/duplicator. That will make the drive swapping and backup easy. Gotta get the 2tb drive out of there anyway to rip the requested header info. Anybody got any other experiments they'd like me to try, now's the time ...
Edited by NOSTRADIMWIT - 12/20/12 at 4:47pm

How many recording hours finally you get with the 2Tb drive?

Recording hours didn't change based on what shows on the screen when I set a new timer - I get the same numbers I had with the 1tb drive. As I said, I'm hoping that's just a firmware thing, where it's just pulling estimates from a table based on the largest drive size the Maggie comes with from the factory at the selected recording quality. Unless somebody knows a trick or two, I expect the only way I'll know how much it actually can store is to start recording and see how many hours I get before it pukes ...

Maybe reformat the 2tb drive to a different sector size? Ida know ... the built in check routines were fairly useless there. Hopefully the 100k data dump of the HDD header information will help. I downloaded iBored tonight and will do da dump in the next day or so when I swap back to the original drive - I've got to get the 2tb drive out of the Maggie and over on this computer to do that anyway. When I do get the Maggie modded for hooking up an external dock, I'll swap the 2tb drive back in and commence to filling that. The table in the owner's manual shows 208 hours at HQ for a 1tb HDD, so if I get beyond that recording straight blocks of whatever, there's a clue ...

I'll also have to keep an eye out for any firmware upgrades that may update those estimate tables ...

Brings to mind the question - is the firmware even upgradable on these things? And if so, how often do they post updates? I figure it'd be a download, rip to dvd, and power up with the disk in the drive. That's how my Pannie worked anyway. I did check both Funai and Magnavox online and they DO show a firmware update available for the MDR513H. Seeing as how they're the same family, there's hope that the 537 can be upgraded (eventually) if we're just missing something and it really positively won't handle 2tb (or more) as is.

Last test complete ... for now. I ran around three hours at HD and the time available counter dropped accordingly. AssUming the counter estimates are correct, and assUming I'm running the most current firmware (build date AUG2012) - 1TB is the current limit for drive size. Drat ... guess I'll just have to settle for 521 hours at SPP.

(I still have the receipt for my very first hard drive - 20 megs @ $800 - I can remember thinking wOw ... I'll NEVER fill that up! Apparently, "settling" is relative.)

So ... for now ... I'll swap back to the original 1tb drive and button it up. I'll use the 2tb drives and dock/duplicator on the PC for my MKV rips from the old Pannie disks, and think about where to go on the Maggie. 1tb WD green drives are currently only $20 less than the 2tb, so the price point ain't right there. Hold off to see if the price comes down, or maybe get lucky and find a way around the 1tb limit before I fill up my current storage in another 300 hours.

And ya ... I hear ya ... stop your whining ... still planning to do the iBored rip.

Ah. So what you're saying is it's YOUR fault for not asking for 2tb in the first place? Shame ... SHAME!!

I did have a magic moment today ... swapped the original drive back in, buttoning things up and cleaning the clutter for the holidays, and shazam ... all my titles showed up! Only thing I lost was a couple timers, and that's because I left it unplugged for a couple days. Volatile memory apparently. So, for now, experiment complete, and no super zaps or visits from the fire department. Kewl! Only thing left is to rip that header block for ya.

(I expect I may have to reformat the 2tb victim ... er ... drive before I can use it on my PC now? I also expect that will take a while, and not sure if "quick format" will do it. Sector by sector, that'll probably kill a few hours anyway. If I'm REAL lucky, the Maggie writes it's version of the FAT or whatever to a different area and Windows won't even notice any change. Either way, I'll post back with what all was needed to make the HDD usable again on a standard PC.)

134 movies and counting, with 320 hours available at SPP.

Oh. And keep an eye peeled for real deals on 1tb drives ... best price I'm seeing on the WD greenies right now is $79 each.

J&R $74.99.

Why would you have any doubt? Not only will it need to be formatted, but it will need to first be partitioned, even if that means only one partition allocated to use all space on it. Funais set a HD up with a proprietary method, so do setup automatically when it is found to be necessary. PCs don't, although OS installers may make the multi step partition then format process somewhat transparent. Technically, partitioning is formatting too, but if you try to "format" a HD that has no partitions, a "format" program will refuse to do anything but complain or exit.

Something you don't want to do is use an old partitioning program that doesn't allocate space efficiently. Older tools would invariably allocate in multiples of 255x63x512 or 240x63x512. Newer drives of .5GB or more usually need allocations that are a multiple of 4096, which most newer tools do by default even when capable of legacy methodology.

That's where it all gets a bit gray. Funai is certainly not performing a full drive format in the little time it takes to initialize the drive for it's proprietary system, so it'll be interesting to see what it takes to recover to where it's usable on a standard machine. I'd say it's similar to a RAID install which writes hidden blocks in a specific area so the RAID controller recognizes the build and configuration. That's quickly (if destructively if we're talking stripes) fixed. Still thinking a "quick format" should (theoretically of course) be able to rewrite the drive header to standard format as long as the Maggie didn't mess with the primary partition table, and I see no reason for that to have happened - or how it would be able to use the drive if it had without a complete physical reformat.

Or not ... one way to find out.

Even a shiny new drive installed directly to a PC has some issues. Not sure if this is common to ALL 2tb drives or not, but untouched, out of the box, the newer WD drives with "advanced formatting" won't work as a primary OS partition on the older operating systems. You need Vista or newer for that. Otherwise, you're restricted to using them as a secondary (or data) drive AND you have to use a special utility to prep the drive to do even that. Works for me, as I intend to use the 2tb drives for video storage only.

What it will take to "recover" will depend not one iota on what a Funai did with it. The only things affecting how long it takes to configure for a PC are how long it takes to create the partition(s), and how long the chosen formatting tool(s) takes to do its/their job(s). The Funai OTOH uses a proprietary system that in no material way yet shown correlates to a PC's FAT, NTFS, HPFS, EXTx, ReiserFS, BTRFS, LVM or other filesystem. All it needs do is initialize by writing something to a relatively modest number of sectors and the start of the disk, regardless of what may or may not be present on it to start with.