H1 - External USB Drive - corrupted - any fix?

Ade · Post by **Ade** » Fri Feb 01, 2013 06:45

Hi there
A couple of questions. I have an H1 and in the recent storms, the power failed. The external HDD (Seagate, Freeagent, 50GB, external power; fairly old) was no longer recognised by the H1. My Ubuntu machine did - and after a lot of fiddling read it. It seems the file allocation table or MBR is corrupted in some way.
My queries are:
1. is it possible to repair the table - and preserve the data?
2. if I put a new drive on the H1, for recording, do I need to format it to H1 format - or will the H1 record to NTFS?
3. is there any update to the list of drives that work with the H1? I'm thinking about a 1TB drive.
Thanks for your time - great forum. Very helpful.
Kind regards
Ade

prl · Post by **prl** » Fri Feb 01, 2013 09:22

Ade wrote:Hi there
A couple of questions. I have an H1 and in the recent storms, the power failed. The external HDD (Seagate, Freeagent, 50GB, external power; fairly old) was no longer recognised by the H1. My Ubuntu machine did - and after a lot of fiddling read it. It seems the file allocation table or MBR is corrupted in some way.
My queries are:
1. is it possible to repair the table - and preserve the data?

On Ubuntu, fsck is the tool that repairs filesystems. How successful it will be on your drive can't be predicted in advance. You can dry-run fsck using the '-n' option to see what errors are reported, and then decide whether to try to recover the disk. From what you've said, there appears to be little to lose in trying the recovery, since the drive is no longer recognised on the H1. Even if the repair fails, it dosn't appear that you'll be in a worse position than you are now. Windows tools can't be used to repair the HDD, because while it's FAT32, the cluster size is bigger than what Windows allows.

Ade wrote:2. if I put a new drive on the H1, for recording, do I need to format it to H1 format - or will the H1 record to NTFS?
...

Yes, it needs to be set up as a registered recording drive on the H1 (POPUP>System>HDD>Register USB HDD). Registration formats the HDD as FAT32 with 512kB clusters, and also adds some files that indicate that it's a recording HDD. Beyonwizes can't write to NTFS file systems.

Ade · Post by **Ade** » Fri Feb 01, 2013 12:48

Peter,
Many thanks for you advice. Much appreciated. I was out looking at HDD today. I recall that the pocket ones don't really work with the H1; and seem to recall that anything about 500 G also have trouble. Is that so? Or is my memory faulty.
This is the first hickup I've had with the H1 in all the years since I received it. Excellent gadget.
A

prl · Post by **prl** » Fri Feb 01, 2013 17:31

Pocket drives need to draw 500mA or less to work on a Beyonwiz USB port. Unfortunately, many (even most) draw more than that, and manufacturers are generally silent about what their power consumption is in their specifications information.

We used a Western Digital MyBook drive on our H1, and never had any problems with it, but it was only 250GB.

Firmware 01.05.350 is supposed to improve the reliability of large HDDs (>500GB) on internal-drive Beyonwizes. I'm not sure if it helps with the external recording drive on a H1, though at least some of the changes are in the file system formatting and recovery tools, so those improvements should apply to the H1.

I can't recall anyone posting recently about larger capacity HDDs on a H1. You might dig something out by searching on the forum.

Ade · Post by **Ade** » Fri Feb 01, 2013 19:21

Peter
Many thanks for your response. It is very helpful.
Kind regards
Ade