Official Moxi Hard Drive Replacement Thread - Page 9

are we thinking that the internal drive can be put in a raid 1 enclosure and when the original hdd dies..all of the recorded programs, season programs, etc. will be ready to go on the secondary hdd? i've always clone the drive but i end up just keeping it in storage. by the time the original hdd dies, i have to get the hdd out of storage and start over with the recordings, season programs, etc. i would love to avoid this step so if these Startechs are granting you luck..i may have to try also. can you give a model no? thanks.

Sorry that I couldn't respond earlier. It's wild around my house between the holidays, and the fact that I've been sick. Today was the first time that I've checked here for new messages.

Anyway, back when I wrote that last message, I was going to try to use a RAID for the primary drive (internal) of the Moxi, but I ran into some issues that I will try to bring to some level of detail in a week or so. It seemed like it would work at first, but the bottom line is that it didn't, but I'm not sure what happened. Was it something that I did or didn't do correctly? Was it something related to the RAID enclosure? Was it something related to having two primary drives within the RAID and having the CableCARD (M-Card) trying to be store its info on them both? I don't know, but I want to move a little slower next time.

Not only was I trying to experiment using a RAID for the primary, but I was also trying to use another RAID as the external storage too. That could have been another one of my issues with a possible failure with my first attempt with a primary drive.

At one point, I thought that I had totally lost the existing programs that were on my primary drive. I even called Comcast to reactivate my CableCARD, but I'll go into that later when I go into more detail in a week or so.

I want to give it one more attempt, perhaps as early as tomorrow. I really want to hurry before the TV season resumes here in a few days, just in case I screw the information up on my primary drive. In fact, this time I'm going to make a complete backup of my drive onto another drive before I try it again. It was dumb of me to not to do this the first time.

I took things for granted that I would be able to use a RAID system for the primary and another RAID for the external storage, and that may not work out, for reasons that I'm uncertain of at the moment. If it turns out that only one RAID can be used with the Moxi, then I'm hoping that at least a RAID system can be used for the primary drive. I won't worry about any external storage...at least, not for the moment.

For those of you that went up to 3TB

How did you get the drive configured? Are you sure you are using all 3TB or did you have to partition it as a 2TB drive and leaving effectively losing 1TB of space. I was a not aware the Moxi could recognize anything past 2TB

thanks

Well there is the problem... How do you know you have 3TB or 2TB space recognized by the Moxi? The Moxi certainly does not tell you whether you have a 3TB or 2TB install... nor does it tell you how many recording hours your device can hold ..

In the linux world.. drives over 2TB must use GPT ... is Moxi using GPT... I doubt it.


Chances are people only have 2TB of the 3TB useable.

I wonder if you could pull the new 3tb drive from Moxi, after the drive has been setup (format, software installation, and possible partition adjustment), and then look at the partition using GParted. On the surface, it might at least indicate if the partition was set at 2tb, or if the entire 3tb drive was being utilized.

I finally got to feeling better (thanks to antibiotics), and I also got time this morning to get back to experimenting again with using the RAID enclosure for the primary (internal) drive after having some setbacks back in December.

I powered down the Moxi, powered down and disconnected the RAID enclosure that I use strictly for external storage, and I proceeded to remove the primary drive from the Moxi. I then placed the primary drive into a RAID enclosure by itself, and then switched the two SATA connectors on the Moxi board.

Next, I connected the eSATA cable to the RAID enclosure and the Moxi, and turned on the power to the enclosure. Once I was satisfied the enclosure was up to power and working, I then powered on the Moxi.

The Moxi went through its normal boot up procedure and hard drive check, and then I was finally presented with the normal TV display. I immediately noticed that I didn't have any television channels, so I went to the utility area of the Moxi menu and looked at the CableCARD information. It was showing that I didn't have a CableCARD installed even though it was actually still in the slot, and I hadn't messed with it. At that point, I felt there was some sort of issue between the Moxi and the RAID enclosure with regards to using it as a primary, and at the moment, I wasn't sure what the problem was, since the Moxi could access the drive to boot up, and it could see all of the recorded shows that were still on that drive, but for some reason, the CableCARD wouldn't show itself.

So, it was at that point that I decided to return everything back to the way it was again with my original working hard drive configuration, before I had experimented this morning with the primary drive and RAID. As soon I re-booted the Moxi again, the CableCARD could be seen and all of the channels were back. It was almost as if I had never tried this once more.

I'm not entirely sure what the issue was, but if I could have at least seen the CableCARD information with the primary drive inside the RAID, then perhaps I could have speculated the problem further, and perhaps even got it to working correctly. I've reached the point to where I won't be trying to use the primary hard drive within a RAID system anymore, unless I can think of something or get some sort of insight as to why it didn't work.

However, I am still happy with using the RAID as an external storage, so that won't change for me.

thanks for the update. i can live with swapping internal, redo season settings upon demise. i believe the next hdd will last 4x longer.

No problem. I'm just sorry that it didn't pan out...at least, not yet.

You mentioned something curious just now in that you believe that the next hhd will last 4x longer. Which brand/model hhd are you using or talking about? I was considering trying out a hdd designed for video surveillance.

i just have a wd drive in there. i just am one to believe that it is better than the seagate one but we will see.
Edited by dz2k - 1/5/13 at 4:37pm

I noticed a push button near the center of the circuit board.

Anyone know what it does?

I totally forgot that Gparted will not work on a formatted Moxi drive. After I tried using GParted today and puzzled as to why it didn't recognize the partition and such, I then remembered something posted about the possibility of the drive being encrypted or something and that GParted couldn't see the actual info.

I would assume any button on the circuit board, is the main power to the board...as in every other computer. No harm in pushing it, but you may have to wait several minutes for it to reboot.

I plan on swapping my drive out for the second time, but this last Seagate Barracuda drive lasted me a good two years (i posted on the first page of this thread the first time).

I see a lot of people complaining about having to reset thier cable cards, having trouble installing the OS, and of course, the obvious downside of losing all your exisitng recordings. I'm hoping to negate all these issues by purchasing a new drive and using a drive cloning program, my favorite is Carbon Copy Cloner for macs. It will clone the drive verbatim (hopefully) and evrything should come out the same on the other side, but on a fresh drive!

(of course, if this issue where just on my computer I'd be nervous about cloning potentially bad files to a new drive, but we know what kills the Moxi drives, and it's not any corrupt files, so this should work great.)

Fingers crossed!

I pulled the Seagate PipelineHD drive this evening to ready the installation of the new drive as soon as it arrives from Amazon.

After much research, I decided to go with a Western Digital AV-GP 1TB hard drive. (Model WD10EURX) which is supposedly designed for constant DVR usage. Amazon is selling the drive for $83.85 with free shipping.

When I pulled the Seagate drive, I noticed another one of the push button switches located beneath the drive. So now there are two. I wonder if one of them replaces the FFP procedure..........................

I have pressed the button near the cablecard before, and it definitely reboots the Moxi, but I've only done it with an already Moxi formatted drive and it reboots normally. That's a good question to whether it might substitute for a FFP if the drive hasn't been Moxi formatted yet.

While I was playing around with the RAID I finally noticed the second button for the first time. I guess because it's hidden under the drive location. I wondered about it, but I haven't pressed that one. I thought about pressing it the next time that I need to replace the drive to see what it might do. Unless somebody does it first, the next time I need to replace the drive with a brand new one, I will try both to see if either will substitute for a FFP.

I've got a two year old Moxi 3 tuner with two Moximates. HD just failed. I checked with Moxi and they want $249.00 for the "flat fee parts and labor repair charge." So, I've been checking out which HDs work and which ones don't. You said that you were buying a WD from Amazon--did you get it and does it work? Any hassles or issues?

Thanks for any advice.

I know that you may have been asking your question to SciTech, and I haven't used the WD video surveillance model of hard drive that he is using, but I'm using a Seagate video surveillance hard drive that I purchased from Amazon. It's a Seagate 2tb SV35 model. and if you use just enter the search terms of, "seagate sv35" (without the quote marks), it should show you three models; a 1tb, a 2tb, and a 3tb. As I already mentioned, I have the 2tb model (model number: ST2000VX000), it works, and I've had no issues with it so far. It also seems fairly quiet.

SciTech may be using one of the Western Digital model of "AV-GP", so you can also perform an Amazon search for "WD AV-GP", and it will show you several models. The Western Digital line of video surveillance hard drives are a little cheaper in price than the Seagate models of the same type.

The video surveillance models from Western Digital and Seagate appear to be more suited for the constant video recordings of a DVR.

Whichever company and model you decide on and purchase, and after you have have installed and used it for 6 to 9 months to start re-establishing your TV recording line-up again, you might want to purchase another drive of the same capacity again. This way you can clone the primary drive onto the new drive and store it away in a safe place. This way you can retain your show line-up and CableCARD information (if you use Comcast). Roughly every 3 to 6 months, perform the cloning process again. This will capture any other changes to your TV recording line-up. Expect the cloning process take take most of a day. I usually do mine on Sunday, since I hardly ever record anything during the day on that day. I start around 8am and I'm finished around 5pm, before I need to record anything that Sunday evening.

As an added note:

The cloning software that many of us use is free and called G4L (Ghost 4 Linux). You just download it and use another free program like "ImgBurn" to burn G4L onto a blank CD or DVD. After you burn G4L onto the disc, you then boot up your PC with G4L to clone your primary hard drive onto the new hard drive. Of course, you'll need to disconnect your original hard drive that you use for your PC to connect to the primary hard drive and the new hard drive before you boot up using the G4L disc. You'll also need to ensure that you adjust your BIOS setting to be able to boot from your CD or DVD player.

I hope that some or all of this information helps.

Sorry that it took so long to get back with everybody regarding the installation of the Western Digital AV-GP 1TB drive (Model WD10EURX) that I purchased from Amazon.

The installation was a complete success; in fact I ordered another Western Digital AV-GP 1TB drive for my 2nd Moxi unit which I received and upgraded today. I wasn't having any major problems with the 2nd unit, just wanted to upgrade for the additional capacity. Both drives are quiet and run cool.

As jbarrington stated, the Seagate drive he's using, and the Western Digital AV-GP drives I'm using, are designed especially for DVR usage which require constant usage.

By-the-way, I played around with the pushbutton switch located underneath the drive and have no idea what's it for or what its doing when pushed. It lit up a couple of white LED's located near the switch, and that's all it seemed to do. It definitely did not perform the FFP when pushed. Hopefully someone will figure out what it's for.

You're right, I intended to ask the question to SciTech--but thanks for responding with your information. I like the idea of buying a second drive and cloning it a few times a year--not so much to save recorded shows but more to have it properly synched to the cable card (FIOS in my system) in case the main drive fails--which seems to be a matter of time with these systems. A couple of questions--do you always put the "old" drive back in after cloning or do you alternate between the two, making sure that the cloned drive actually works and giving each some usage in between cloning? And, have you--or anyone else--figured out how many hours your 2tb drive will handle?

Final thought--after reading through the nine pages in this thread and noticing which drives work and which ones don't, it seems like the drives made for A/V are the way to go--regardless of brand--and that the Moxi OS recognizes up to 2tb but probably can't use the last tb in a 3tb setup.

Thanks again.

Yeah, with Moxi constantly recording to the drive, it seems the life of a drive could be anywhere from 6 months to 2 years (if you're really lucky). I'm hoping these drives designed for video will last much longer than a typical computer hard drive. Fingers crossed.

Anyway, for myself, the reason that I'm getting into a frequent cloning process is due to several reasons, but I'm sure that others could add to it.

First, you never know when a hard drive will suddenly fail. Sure, you might get a few warning signs, but sometimes you just don't. Having a backup (cloned drive) ready, pretty much means that your Moxi should be back and running in less than an hour. Trying to clone a really old Moxi drive can be hit or miss as far as being successful. A year ago, I tried to clone a drive that seemed to be failing, and G4L just couldn't do it, so I was stuck with having to install a new drive and reinstalling the Moxi OS using the FFP.

Second, it can take almost a year to rebuild the recording list of your favorite network and cable shows you record on a weekly basis. With TV seasons starting in the Fall, Spring, and Summer, it can take almost a year to rebuild your list. With cloning, you can preserve a majority of your recording list, and with your cloned drive as backup, all you need to do is possibly update a couple of shows. My recording show list is time consuming, so I value it immensely.

Third, the cloned drive preserves the CableCARD (Multi-Card) information. This greatly reduces the need to call up your cable company to see if they can reactivate the card again over the phone. If they are unable to do so, then means the cable company will have to schedule a truck roll-out, and that could mean no recordings of your favorite shows (a few days to a week). Unless you can use an "On-Demand" service (like Comcast offers), or you have Hulu Plus, you could be out of luck seeing this week's show.

I think that I suggested doing a cloning every 3 to 6 months, but it's really up to you. Some people might have the time to do it every 2 months, but some may do it every 12 months. Personally, I like the 3 to 6 month schedule of cloning. However, I don't know what to say if your original drive reaches a year and half, or more of continuous use, with the clone always in a safe place. Trying to perform a clone from your old drive could start to get risky in that the old drive could cause the cloning process to fail because of drive errors. Then you could have your old drive failing, and the information on cloned drive unusable. When I say unusable, I don't mean the drive is ruined, only the Moxi data could be, and this would mean that you would need to perform a FFP on the cloned drive to reinstall the Moxi software again.

The only two things that I can think of if your original drive within the Moxi is over a year or more, is to either stop any further cloning to that drive, or purchase a third drive to make a second cloned copy using the first cloned drive. The second cloned drive just ensures that if you continue to try and clone the original drive onto the first drive, that there isn't a loss of data. If there is, then all you would need to do is use the second cloned to re-clone the first cloned drive.... Whew! I hope that last part made sense. LMAO!! Anyway, those are the only things that I can think of to do after a year or more of using the original Moxi drive.

To answer your other question, you can test out the clone drive to ensure it is working properly after a cloning, and it's entirely up to you if you just want to keep the cloned drive in the Moxi, but I always reinstall the old drive. Some may feel that swapping back and forth after a cloning could mean that both drives will be wearing out at roughly the same time. I know this doesn't necessarily mean that both will fail at the same. However, I could see arguments to where some might say keep the clone in a safe place, and some may say swapping would be fine for many reasons. I really feel that it's up to what you might think is comfortable and right for you.
Edited by jbarrington - 1/20/13 at 12:49pm

Hi John:

Both the 2-Tuner and 3-Tuner Moxi units came standard with a 500GB internal hard drive capable of recording 75 hours of High Definition programs or 300 hours of Standard Definition programs.

A 1 Terabyte internal drive should produce 150 hours of High Definition programing or 600 hours of Standard Definition programs.

A 2 Terabyte internal drive (which is the maximum size drive that the Moxi will recognize) should produce up to 300 hours of High Definition programing or 1200 hours of Standard Definition programs.

Additional storage may be obtained by adding an external SATA drive.

maybe it needs to also have the center push button pressed at the same time(which is said to reboot device).

@jbarrington: great idea for cloning every once in a while BUT before your hdd starts to demonstrate signs of failure(constant reboots, etc). i can actually keep season recordings and not have to manually program them along with keeping current recordings. this is wonderful as ive tested it.

Tried that; didn't work!

thanks for trying. we appreciate it.

My hard drive started to fail, so I did the FFP, with a new drive. I tried two drives. First a Western Digital AV-GP drive, which failed, and then a seagate which has been mentioned earlier in this thread which was successful

Details:

Moxi 3-tuner DVR


WD AV-GP 2 TB AV Hard Drive: 3.5 Inch, SATA II, 64 MB Cache - WD20EURS
FAILURE-Recordings would stutter, and the moxi would lock up for minutes at a time

Seagate Barracuda 7200 1.5 TB 7200RPM SATA 3Gb/s 32MB ST31500341AS
SUCCESS-Can record three streams, and still operate the moxi. I'll be interested to see how long this drive lasts. I'm going to be buying a second one as a backup for cloning, restoring all the channel selections, and recording preferences is a pain.

My Moxi is acting similar to what has been reported previously...

Had some freeze ups; reboots worked for a couple of days. Now after the last freeze up can't get past the "Moxi is checking your hard drive..." message.

After 4 reboots got past it and for the moment it is usable.

Is this the final indicator that the HD has to be replaced????

Single red light on the left is on when it freezes...

There are a lot of HD replacements that seem to work..... I will take advice on the best options that all of you have.....

Hi Duck05:

Sounds like your drive is starting to fail.

I have 2 Two-Tuner Moxi's and just replaced both units with Western Digital AV-GP 1TB drives (Model WD10EURX) purchased from Amazon for around $85.00 each.

After you purchase your new drive, follow the instructions posted by Giomania or miked1960 (Post #222) to complete your installation. It's a pretty simple procedure..

Good luck!

I have a Moxi and an external 1 terabyte WD. The internal hd grinds and huffs and puffs.(3 years) I would love to swap it out but I don't want to lose what I have recorded (around 50%). Did you guys just bite the bullet and do it or did you wait to clear this out? Will the external remain untouched and available after FFP (four finger reset)? Should I unhook external before FFP? Moxi provides unhook external but it says you lose recordings. I was thinking of unplugging Moxi, unhook external, swap internal for new, reattach external. Any one do this previously? Thanks!
Tee Jay

Moxi 3-Tuner DVR
Western Digital - Caviar Green 2TB Internal SATA Hard Drive
Model: WDBAAY0020HNC-NRSN
FAILURE

FFP, I get the menu and press OK, get "Install Initiated...", the drive rumbles for about three minutes then stops and the left light starts blinking red, and that's all she wrote. Let it go for a couple hours that way, no change. Am I just not waiting long enough?

Just to make things more complicated, the drive had the above model number on the web site and the box, had WD20EARX on the label. Note that this model number was labeled a success in post #19.

sounds like youve done everything right bit should try a different hdd.

Does anyone know if the cloning software called G4L (Ghost 4 Linux) will clone form a 2tb HD to a 1 tb HD? The 2tb HD is only about 15% full. Help.