Official Moxi Hard Drive Replacement Thread - Page 8

Same as jharaldson previously posted...

Moxi 2-tuner DVR
Seagate Barracuda 7200 1.5 TB 7200RPM SATA 3Gb/s 32MB Cache 3.5 Inch Internal Hard Drive ST31500341AS-Bare Drive
Internal
Success

It's worked out great so far!

I just wanted to confirm this is the typical finding of a dead drive? We have to keep resetting the Moxi and it lasts maybe an hour and then dies again.

Thanks for the instructions.


Could someone post a link to amazon or newegg for a drive around 500GB that will work?
I have a 2 tuner that seems to be just about to turn into a paperweight.
Any help is greatly appreciated.

.

I had previously replaced our failing stock HD with a 500GB Seagate I had kicking around (which runs well), but wanted to install software to another drive to have a replacement ready to roll. In looking to increase storage size as well as reliability, I went to a 2TB Seagate SV35 series (ST2000VX000SP), purportedly designed for the rigors of 24/7 video surveillance (currently $120 delivered from CompUSA --- a few bucks less via credit card links etc). A quick and easy upgrade using the procedures Mark listed (thanks, Mark) and much quieter running than the stock or replacement 500GB. No issues so far.

Paul

Paul,

So plugging in the power first, and then pressing the reset button when ready for the FFP procedure worked?

Thanks.

Mark

Do you know if I can use a docking station to copy the information off the broken hard drive to the new one? I tried the 4 finger reset and it didn't work at all for me. Please advise. thank you for your time. Pj

if the hard drive already has issues("broken") w/ loading the moxi, its too late my friend.

Yep, worked like a charm. I used a socket (as in from a socket wrench set) though in lieu of a washer as, for me, it is easier to grip and keep squared on the four switches.

Still don't know the function of the internal button switch, though (and I'm not inclined to check further: working fine = good enough; no sense "fixing it" until it breaks!)

Paul

I would like to thank everyone on this forum for their assistance. I have successfully replaced (and upgraded) the Moxi Hard drive.

I installed one of these:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B006IMFT32/ref=oh_details_o00_s00_i00

I went with Western Digital because the Seagate line for DVRs (pipeline) are poorly reviewed. I saw many positive reviews for people that put this drive in Tivo so I went for it. While installing the drive, I noticed the fan was quite gunked up, so removed the caked on dust with a wet cotton swab and then used some compressed air to clear the remaining debris. It probably is obvious, but I thought I would share that tidbit. The FFP method worked perfectly for me on the 2nd try. I did not need to use a washer. For me, the time was 2 seconds and the install screen popped up.

I did have problems regaining all my channels back however. Before my Moxi died, I suspected that the cablecard had gone bad, so I requested a new on from Verizon. I completed their online cable card activation and was still not able to get all my channels. I had to contact FIOS tech support who de-activated the card and then re-activated the card. Now I am getting all the channels I should be getting.

Performance wise, the drive is quiet. Menus load quickly as well. The operating temperatue right now is about 91.3 degrees, which is much cooler than I remember it operating at. I haven't recorded anything so I can't comment on that.

Hope this is helpful for everyone and again, thank you.

Thanks to everyone here from me as well.
Your instructions were flawless with one exception, I never really knew if it was working along the way.

It said install initialize... For quite some time before I got the normal starting services stuff. It was only about 15-20 minutes but I had nearly given up and started it again when it moved on. Moral of the story, it would seem that install initialize meant it was working.

The drive I used was the 2TB Hitachi coolspin mentioned in this thread, cheap (enough) from Amazon. Also worth outing I had a "newer" 3 tuner model, looked just like the pictures.
Lastly, I tried the washer and the the socket method on the 4 buttons but for me, nothing worked as well as just my fingers, 4th time was the money shot.

Also recorded shows working fine and it would seem crisper to me.

Thanks forum.

I will be switching to Directv soon if anyone's interested in a 3 tuner it's now with new 2TB drive and 3 Mates,1 that is new in the box, never used. If interested PM me..

I should have added, I did NOT plug directly to my router and works fine.

Thanks for the confirmations and comments on the FFP procedures. I modified the document, and am re-posting it here. I still need to find the instructions posted for the physical drive replacement procedure, so it will be a complete guide.

Moxi Hard Drive Replacement Instructions.docx 22k .docx file

Mark
Edited by giomania - 11/5/12 at 8:29am

I got this from Moxi them self for uploading the software.

1. On the front panel hold down the Reset button for 4 seconds
2. At the specific moment the Moxi begins to reboot, hold down all of the 4 –directional arrows on the front of the Moxi unit simultaneously for 25 seconds
a. “MOXI” would display on the screen for first 15-18 seconds
b. Screen would flash for 1 second
c. Then “MOXI” would reappear on the screen for 2 seconds
3. Now you will receive the Welcome to Moxi screen to initiate the recovery process.
a. Press front panel “OK” button to continue - do not wait too long to do so
4. You should see “Install Initiated” indicating the Recovery App has been started – this process can take up to 20-40 minutes
5. The DVR will then reboot on its own
6. After the reboot, you will see the verification screens for account setup:
a. Name
b. Address
c. Channel Lineup
d. Press “OK” to continue
7. After account verification, you will be asked to reboot the DVR
8. You will now be sent to the Moxi UI. From here you just need to contact your cable provider to have them send a “validate” to receive all of the channels.

NOTE: On step 2, if you start seeing “Moxi Is Checking Your Hard Drive“ you have gone too far in the boot process, and have to start over.
*If you come across being stuck at “Install Initiated” for more than an hour please try the procedure again. And make sure that your Ethernet cable is securely connected on both end of the router and your Moxi DVR.
Lastly, if this procedure does not go through the second time around, then we would need to go through with an RMA.

Please update us with your results.

Regards,
Moxi Customer Care
Phone: 866-969-6694
Hours: Mon-Fri 7:00AM - 6:00 PM
Email: CustomerCare@moxi.com

So if you keep getting "You do not subscribe to this channel" is this the hard drive or Cable card?

Could be one of several things, depending on what changes/conditions the system has been subjected to, but if a drive was recently installed then it is most likely the data number is incorrect.

When a new drive is installed the "Data Number" changes. Typically, you'll be able to receive basic tier channels but not the premium ones unless the cable company updates the info on their end.

You can go to the diagnostics menu and look up the "Data Number" (in the card pairing section). You can then call your cable company's Customer Service who, though usually not having the ability to update that info themselves, can forward you to an "inbound" tech who can update the info. They'll then send a refresh signal (won't work if the data number is incorrect), and you should be good to go (having avoided a roll 'n toll service fee to read off the very same info you have access to).


Paul

Thanks. I have refined my instruction guide accordingly.

Mark

Great explanation of the process. I added some of thes nuggets of wisdom to the guide above.

Mark

I have updated the last sections of the instructions, and was wondering if you could comment on the accuracy of step10, as identified by Moxi technical support:

9. You should see “Install Initiated”, indicating the recovery application has commenced. The entire process can take 20-40 minutes to complete; if it is at “Install Initiated” for more than an hour, try the procedure again.

10. The Moxi will reboot automatically, and you will see the following:
a. Verification screens for account setup (Name, Address, Channel Lineup) will appear; press “OK” to continue.
b. After the account verification, you will be asked to reboot the DVR; press the “reset” button.
c. After the reboot and the normal startup checks, the Moxi UI should appear.

dMoney

My Moxi went dead on me 9 months after the warrenty but I had purchased and extened warrenty from Square Trade Warrenties so I sent it in to Moxi they send you a different unit and square trade paid me back including shipping. When you send it into Moxi you give them the Ser # it's notied on the packing list going in and new Ser# sent to you and you get the same size HDD you get when you bought the unit.

I realize that this thread is aged a bit, but I've only recently discovered it. I have a question about diagnosing the MOXI DVR hard drive. What are indications that the hard drive has or is getting ready to die? In my case, my video was frozen on the same image (recorded video) yet the audio continued to play. After resetting the unit, I found that the MOXI DVR is now stuck displaying "Starting Moxi services..." with a live program audio running in the background.

If this is in fact a dead hard drive, does anyone have a walk through for the hard drive replacement?

I would suspect an issue in the video circuitry of the unit, since you are getting audio. We don't have a complete walk-through guide yet, but the instructions for the portion after the new drive is installed is pretty succinct. Scroll up, as we were working on this recently.

Mark

How is the SSD holding up? Several people said it was a waste and the Moxi would burn it up, but I'm curious. Any problems?

Having random freezing on 3 tuner Moxi about 2 yrs old now. Has been performing great with Lacie Quadra4 set at raid 5 bringing it to 3TB. Recently lost a drive in the Lacie, inserted replacement, waited for rebuild and has been going great until now.

I do suspect the internal drive is the problem now and is on its way out.

Given the configuration I have noted above, can someone give me a recommendation on the internal drive to use?

um, no offense, but look up and throughout this post for good replacement internal drive success.

How long does Arris plan to continue support the Moxi product line?

That's the Million Dollar question, Arris already, "accidentally and or incorrectly" announced End-of-Life earlier this year for Dec 31, 2013, and then posted the following notice:

Documentation of the accidental posting:
http://www.zatznotfunny.com/2012-02/arris-to-cease-retail-moxi-dvr-service/
http://www.avsforum.com/t/1095015/moxi-hd-dvr/5340#post_21615016

Thanks Bryan!

Hi Robert,

I've been using this two drive RAID enclosure as my external drive for many months now and have really loved it, but the fan is starting to fail. I know that I could just find another replacement fan to put inside of it, but I decided to purchase another tRAID enclosure just like my current one to have on hand. However, the company no longer sells it (discontinued), so I found and purchased a totally different two drive enclosure from a different company that's suppose to be better. Actually, I purchased several of them. The reason is that I want to not only replace the existing older external RAID enclosure with this newer one, but I'm going to have my internal hard drive in an external RAID enclosure too, for a RAID as the external and a RAID for the internal.... Plus, I wanted a couple of extra enclosures as future spares.

Since this was the very first experience with using RAID, I have have several questions.

1. Since my current external RAID drives have programs still on them, if I pull both those drives from the older two drive RAID enclosure and put them into the RAID enclosure from a totally different manufacturer, will the programs be fine, or will putting the two drives with all those programs get erase because they are being placed into a different make of RAID two drive enclosure?

2. The other question regards the internal MOXI drive that I now want to make into a RAID as well. I guess that it goes without saying that I have programs on that as well. If I pull that internal drive out and put it into a RAID enclosure, should the MOXI reboot fine without losing the programs on it, or will I have to do a software four-fingered installation again? Follow up question is next...

3. If I don't have to do the four-fingered re-installation again with the new enclosure with the existing internal drive, can I then insert the second drive into the RAID enclosure? I was worried about the drive information getting screwed up and having to not only do the software re-installation again, but also losing my recorded show, and possibly needing comcast to roll out to my house.


As a side note, I'm strongly considering using those Seagate video surveillance hard drives inside both RAID enclosures in the near future that were mentioned here in an earlier post. If having these newer RAID enclosures are just going to cause me to lose all of my programs, I might just go ahead and get the Seagate video drives and start fresh before the new shows start broadcasting again in January.

Since it has been many days since I asked my 3 questions, and it looks like it might be a while before Robert checks back in, [grin], I decided to try and see if I could take a chance answer at least my first question myself.

The first thing that I did was properly disconnected the old RAID from the MOXI, and then I went to the MOXI list of recorded shows that I had and wrote them all down. Then I reconnected the old RAID back into the MOXI. This would tell me what shows were actually recorded on the RAID drives, so I then went back to the recorded list of shows to compare and write down those additional shows.

I decided to pull only one of the drives from the old two-drive RAID enclosure from one manufacturer (Cooldrives eSATA USB2.0) and insert it into the new two-drive RAID enclosure from a different manufacturer (Startech eSATA USB2.0). Of course, I made sure the dip switches were flipped to make it a "RAID 1 Safe" just like the old enclosure.

I slipped only one of the drives into the new enclosure, reconnected the new RAID to the MOXI, and turned it on. Next, I went to the recorded list on the MOXI to see if those additional shows were still there, and they were, so I tested to make sure a show from the RAID would properly play, and it did. Whew!!

Since I now felt pretty comfortable the new RAID would be ok, I went ahead and inserted the second drive into the new RAID, and everything appears to be fine. The new RAID from Startech appears to be a little more quieter and cooler than the old enclosure. It's a refurbished unit that is actually cheaper than a new Cooldrives unit.

I should also say the reason that I only tested one of the drives from the old enclosure was so that if the new enclosure screwed up the shows on that one drive, I could just hook back up the old enclosure with the remaining good drive with the shows, and then hurry up to watch those shows before anything can happen.

Now, that still leaves the other questions (2 and 3)..... I guess that question number 2 is probably now the most important for me. From the various RAID sites that I've been reading, I've been stitching together enough information to where if question number 2 is answered to my favor, then question number 3 "should" be fine to my favor as well.

I finally got your message. Sounds like you are getting on pretty well. I think you had the right approach. Pulling one drive from the CoolDrives box allows you to experiment and still rebuild the array if needed.

The CoolDrives box is SiL57xx based. Those controllers do allow you to take a drive with existing data and turn it into a RAID 1 set. I have no experience with the Startech, but I think it is also based on the SiL57xx.

I did have a disaster with the CoolDrives USB 3.0 box in a regular Windows PC application. When I plugged in one of my RAID set drives, it clobbered the drive with a new format. I had to copy from the SATA box to the USB 3.0 box.

I too had fan failures on the CoolDrive SATA box. I gutted the back panel and mounted an 80mm super quiet fan on the outside of the box. They were expensive fans ($9) and have been great for the last 9 months.

I recently bought a few WD Red drives. So far they work fine, about 3 weeks.

I am also setting up a CineRAID 458 box. Four drives with RAID 0/1/10/5. This will be for my Windows Media Center, using RAID 5.

You should be OK plugging in your internal as the first of a RAID 1 set with a SiL57xx controller. It will clone it to the second drive you plug in. As a test I took an old 40gb drive and 4FP'ed it then put it in the RAID 1 box and it booted the Moxi fine.

Robert
Edited by Robert Duncan - 12/22/12 at 2:53pm

I'm doing very well. It's been a while since I've needed to post, but I do drop by from time to time to catch up (lurk) on possible new discoveries about the Moxi within a couple of the threads. I hope that you've been well, too.

When the fan started to fail on the Cooldrives RAID, it made me contemplate about several things; should I get a couple of more of these RAID units, maybe just replace the fan, and possibly converting the internal drive to RAID.

When I purchased the Cooldrive unit, I had actually purchased two of them, but the fans appear to be the weakest component. Another weak area appears to be keeping the drives cool, but I can't really blame the RAID boxes themselves. I use faster RPM drives that generate a little more heat. I did take one of the units and drilled large holes into it to allow more air into it and to allow more heat to escape. I figured the enclosures were sort of cheap in price, so I really didn't mind, and they would be out of the way to where I didn't have to worry about anything happening to the drives and such. Anyway, I still like the enclosures, so I looked into getting a couple of more. However, I found they didn't seemed to be made anymore.

I thought about just going ahead and replacing the fans, but I just decided to search for another enclosure and use the Cooldrive enclosures for something different, like storing all my computer files from all of my home computers. After I found a suitable RAID enclosure replacement, I would then look into getting a replacement fan for the Cooldrive.

I found the Startech enclosure after doing search for a two-bay RAID enclosure with eSATA and USB 2.0. I figured that using that type of search term would yield something close to the Cooldrive, and it did. If I am remembering correctly, the Startech sold for close to around $130 new, but these were refurbished units that were selling for about $58. I also saw they were not being made anymore, so I went ahead and picked up 5 of them. Yeah, I know it is a little bit of overkill, but I had my first thoughts about using RAID for no only the external storage, but now using RAID for the internal drive. Since these enclosures weren't being made too, I wanted to pick up several to have on hand for the internal and external.

Moving on, I finally had that "Duh" moment about the same time towards the information on the internal drive. It's that "Duh" moment that I think that you already realized a while back, but for some reason, it never clicked with me. Sure the internal drive may have some programs on it, but what makes the internal drive REALLY valuable (besides the programs) is the OS, the cable-card info, and most importantly for me is--all of the actual show titles that I want to record. If the show titles are lost, then I will need to spend many, many months getting all of those back into the Moxi again.

I had read from several hardware sites and such to where the information seems to be conflicted, regarding whether or not the existing information on a drive would be lost if the hard drive wasn't used inside a RAID, but now you wanted to use the drive in a RAID. Some information would say that you would lose everything on the drive because the RAID hardware would need to format the drive for its standard, other info appeared to show the hard drive files would be ok if the drive had been strictly used as storage and not as a boot drive, and other info said that boot drives MIGHT be ok depending on different conditions. The RAID hardware and/or whether you used Linux as the OS "seemed" to be the biggest factors.

Everything seems to point to that Moxi is a Linux based system, but I still couldn't be sure whether or not I would lose everything from the internal drive once I plugged the drive into the RAID -- that the RAID would wipe out the drive. Since there is a semi holiday lull in any new TV episodes, I wanted to hurry up and get in contact with you to see if you could shed any light to my plight. It seems that you feel that I should be able to pull out my internal drive and slap it into a RAID enclosure (the first time for it) and keep on moving forward without an issue. I realize that you aren't making any guarantees there will be no issues, but it appears that you have done some rough testing and it appears to work fine.

If there was going to be an issue with the internal drive and using it within its first RAID enclosure, this would be a good time to decide whether to test it, or just start fresh with two new hard drives. This way the seasonal lull is happening, and the possibility of needing comcast to come out if I can't convince their supposedly phone "techs" to connect me to an inbound techs.

Also, after someone had posted earlier about using hard drives that were designed for video surveillance, I've been trying to look into those since they are designed for constant video recordings much like the Moxi is. I see that Amazon has three different Seagate SATA models (1tb, 2tb, and 3tb) designed for video that CCTV builders give high marks towards.