alwin Posted March 30, 2007 Posted March 30, 2007 Has anybody upgraded their hardrive on the Mediastar pvr-820 ? And if so is there any improvement on performance and any glitches, etc, i.e. sound dropouts that I have with mine. Would the Samsung 300GB HD300LD work ? I refer to the excellent hints and photos by Crusher upgrading the harddrive on a PT-920. Sure it will be similar for the 820 ? Does the harddrive work all the time as part of the normal reception process or only for recording ?
paulgun Posted April 27, 2007 Posted April 27, 2007 upgraded their hardrive on the Mediastar pvr-820 ? I've sucessfully used a Seagate 500GB I was all set with my dremel, external 5.25" hard disk removable caddy, I was going to graft on to my new FrankenPVR, but with the USB interface, removing the drive on a semi-regular basis seems redundant ... the very first time i switched it on, it seem to power off after a few seconds, i though maybe the firmware was rejecting it, i kept trying a few times presing "exit" during the several seconds of "HDD initialisation" message until I could get to the format page. seems to power on without issue now. any improvement on performance and any glitches, etc, i.e. sound dropouts that I have with mine. Original drive used only for probably an hour, can't really compare performance I've heard (or not) the odd rare audio dropout, i've assumed this is just a feature of losing a few bits between the satellite through the atmosphere to dish... I've had a long movie almost 100% perfect then a tiny pixellation for 1/2 second in the middle - perhaps a bird flew past the dish ? Been trying to really stress the drive by doing 4 recordings at once (all on same transponder of course), it will take a while to fill the drive... I have had some recordings show up with '?' and appear corrupted . ie cannot play. but if i hit number keys to skip ie '50' to goto 50% it seems to play ok from there. Haven't gotten to the bottom of that yet .. ie. could be data loss on the HDD or perhaps for some other reason. ie I've testing buggy EPG functions quite a lot. machine was crashing ... (TBA) hints and photos by Crusher upgrading the harddrive on a PT-920. Sure it will be similar for the 820 ? Yep
Refidim Posted April 27, 2007 Posted April 27, 2007 Has anybody upgraded their hardrive on the Mediastar pvr-820 ?? Click here for full details. The procedure for 920 is the same as for 820
paulgun Posted May 16, 2007 Posted May 16, 2007 I've sucessfully used a Seagate 500GB... it will take a while to fill the drive... FYI I got to around 50% full (or is that 50% empty?). Unfortunately it appears the system had crashed and then got stuck on "HDD initialisation" at boot. Normally this goes away after a few seconds, however after 20 minutes (with no audible HDD activity) it seems there was some corruption. Here's what didn't work: 1. At this point, there is no option to connect the drive via USB 2. Remove the drive from the Media star and connect to a computer ( I used a cheap USB housing ) 3. The drive was recognised with no issue and even mounted the FAT32 filesystem 4. I could even browse the files in PVR\AV and at first glance appeared to contain normal sets of AVF and AVR files 5. I thought maybe when it crashed some of the files were corrupted so I ran DOS command "chkdsk /f" against the drive 6. There were a few complaints of multiple file entries in \PVR\AV and some files were renamed 7. I ran it chkdsk again until there were no errors 8. There were a few more complaints regarding nonvalid long folder entry from \PVR\AV... 9. At this point the filesystem was clean 10. I returned the HDD to the Mediastar, however again it appeared to power on the HDD and then a brief click of the head and stuck again on "HDD initialisation" 11. I removed the HDD from the mediastar, back to the computer 12. examined the PVR\AV directory again and Oops, it looks like chkdsk had renamed about half the files into a DOS 8.3 file length naming standard , some were no longer the default .AVR or .AVF extension 13. I wasn't that concerned with the content so I just deleted any renamed files and left any normal looking long filenames with AVR/AVF pairs 14. still didn't work on PVR 15. frustrated, I just deleted all files under PVR\AV. 16. still didn't work on PVR 17. back on the computer, deleted the FAT32 partition on the drive (effectivly an empty drive) 18. returned to PVR, this time it recognised the drive and started a format process 19. pvr all good (except for the loss of files) Ok, next time if I really wanted to save the files I would need to copy to another disk, reformat, then restore
paulgun Posted May 16, 2007 Posted May 16, 2007 I contacted mediastar about occasional crashing, a new firmware 2087 is hoped to be released this month. . Hopefully I can last a month without seeing partial filesystem corruption that can only be fixed by reformatting ...;-)
temporary1 Posted May 18, 2007 Posted May 18, 2007 FYI I got to around 50% full (or is that 50% empty?). ... 5. I thought maybe when it crashed some of the files were corrupted so I ran DOS command "chkdsk /f" against the drive 6. There were a few complaints of multiple file entries in \PVR\AV and some files were renamed ... 12. examined the PVR\AV directory again and Oops, it looks like chkdsk had renamed about half the files into a DOS 8.3 file length naming standard , some were no longer the default .AVR or .AVF extension Well thats interesting... I wonder if it really is limited to 400GB, and 500 just isnt going to work in the firmware??? Any word from mediastar on this???For 5,6,12... If you move the files in the UI into a folder and then run chkdsk you wont get the file renaming problem. I wonder what 2087 will hold? (and when it will come to the 920...)
paulgun Posted June 1, 2007 Posted June 1, 2007 FYI I got to around 50% full.... Unfortunately it appears the system had crashed and then got stuck on "HDD initialisation" at boot. .... It happened again ,this time I got probably a little over 55% of 500GB full, around 200 files in the PVR list. . I noticed the PVR list was very SLOW to scroll through... . I could see all the files ok on a PC with the drive removed from the MS. there didn't appear to be any corruption at all of the filenames, although chkdsk reported many errors (this time i didn't actually have it fix anything). . I swaped the drive with spare 320GB Western Digital . didn't recognise it all (as noted elsewhere samsung or seagate only appear supported) . back to samsung 160GB... . This is either s bug fixed in firmware, or some kind of permanent memory limitation on the FAT32 filesystem entries - in which case probably no more than 300GB will be of any use... ;-( (still waiting of firmware upgrade...)
temporary1 Posted June 5, 2007 Posted June 5, 2007 ...I swaped the drive with spare 320GB Western Digital . didn't recognise it all (as noted elsewhere samsung or seagate only appear supported) . ... in which case probably no more than 300GB will be of any use... ;-( As you say, WD drives have not been shown to work (in 2 tries?) The seagate HD400LD does work, and I've taken it to 96% full so far...-I hate autodelete so always make sure there is room...Were the files all in the /av/ (top) directory, or in subfolders? (just wondering if there is a per-folder limit on file numbers...) Any firmware update would (i think) take a rework of the header file, and the operating system, given the tricks that appear to be in use just to get to 400GB... (fat32 in itself should be able to handle 2-8TB)
DarylM Posted December 27, 2007 Posted December 27, 2007 (edited) 4. I could even browse the files in PVR\AV and at first glance appeared to contain normal sets of AVF and AVR files5. I thought maybe when it crashed some of the files were corrupted so I ran DOS command "chkdsk /f" against the drive 6. There were a few complaints of multiple file entries in \PVR\AV and some files were renamed 7. I ran it chkdsk again until there were no errors 8. There were a few more complaints regarding nonvalid long folder entry from \PVR\AV... 9. At this point the filesystem was clean 10. I returned the HDD to the Mediastar, however again it appeared to power on the HDD and then a brief click of the head and stuck again on "HDD initialisation" 11. I removed the HDD from the mediastar, back to the computer 12. examined the PVR\AV directory again and Oops, it looks like chkdsk had renamed about half the files into a DOS 8.3 file length naming standard , some were no longer the default .AVR or .AVF extension I have just upgraded an Arion 9300 from the 160GB disk to a 500GB Seagate disk. In this case, it has quite a bit of content on it that I wanted. First, I used an imaging program to back it up and restore to the new disk. This left me with a 500GB disk with a 160GB partition taking up the whole disk. In the proces of putting the old disk in the computer, it did the same thing as above with the renaming thing. It looks like the fat32 file naming is not quite legal for Windows. As there are multiple .AVR files with the same short name, Windows hashes them up by renaming them. You can them manually put them back, eg I had The Beatles' Biggest Secrets_#001_200712132132.AVF 15k The Beatles' Biggest Secrets_#001_200712132132.AVR 2GB THEBEA~1.AV0 1.2GB. Fairly obviously, the last file needs to be renamed to The Beatles' Biggest Secrets_#002_200712132132.AVR Once you do this, it will be fine, as the short names will be unique. One other thing is that the disk upgrade instructions for the Mediastar said to make sure the disk is seto to Cable Select (CS). On the Arion, it needs to be set to Master. CS doesnt work. The solution for me was to format the new disk in the Arion, then copy the AV directory from the old disk to the new. This worked fine. Edited December 27, 2007 by DarylM
temporary1 Posted December 28, 2007 Posted December 28, 2007 I have just upgraded an Arion 9300 from the 160GB disk to a 500GB Seagate disk....It looks like the fat32 file naming is not quite legal for Windows. As there are multiple .AVR files with the same short name, On the Arion, it needs to be set to Master. CS doesnt work. Hey DarylM, I hope you have read the above posts by paulgun where his 500gb seagate caused him troubles. Hope it works for you, please let us know Yes the arion/mediastar does not appear to give the files valid (unique) short filenames. But on the MS at least that is only true for files in the /av/ directory. move them to a sub directory and they are fixed Do this before you copy files from one drive to another or run any disk check. yes, my hdd is set to master (i think), crusher didnt find a difference on the MS (?)
DarylM Posted January 1, 2008 Posted January 1, 2008 Hey DarylM, I hope you have read the above posts by paulgun where his 500gb seagate caused him troubles. Hope it works for you, please let us know Yes the arion/mediastar does not appear to give the files valid (unique) short filenames. But on the MS at least that is only true for files in the /av/ directory. move them to a sub directory and they are fixed Do this before you copy files from one drive to another or run any disk check. yes, my hdd is set to master (i think), crusher didnt find a difference on the MS (?) Yeah I read those, but I am having no problems with the 500GB so far. And yes the short name issue does seem to be only a problem in the root directory, so I would agree that if anyone else is doing the upgrade procedure, move all your programs into a subdirectory on the PVR before moving the disk to a PC. That probably should be added crusher's instructions.
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