Reading BW formatted USB disk on Windows?

meppy · Post by **meppy** » Fri Jul 27, 2012 19:53

Is there a tool/driver for being able to read a USB drive that was formatted on an H1? I have been having huge problems with both my BW PVRs and am looking for replacements (not enough time to get my PC based TV server working well enough) but I need to get some recordings off so I can convert and watch them via Apple TV.

prl · Post by **prl** » Fri Jul 27, 2012 22:45

meppy wrote:Is there a tool/driver for being able to read a USB drive that was formatted on an H1? I have been having huge problems with both my BW PVRs and am looking for replacements (not enough time to get my PC based TV server working well enough) but I need to get some recordings off so I can convert and watch them via Apple TV.

On Windows - as far as I know, no. Can't you connect the USB drive to the AppleTV? OS X can access HDDs formatted as Beyonwiz recording HDDs.

meppy · Post by **meppy** » Sat Jul 28, 2012 08:46

Apple TVs do not have a USB port. But I do have a Macbook Air, if that can read it then surely I can get my PC to read it with the right driver. What format does the BW format the disks with?

My only other option is to copy them over the network from the BW, which usually takes hours.

IanB · Post by **IanB** » Sat Jul 28, 2012 09:06

The BW uses FAT32 with 4096 bytes sectors and 512Kbyte clusters.

Windows demands sectors be 512 bytes and clusters be no larger than 65Kbytes. I am not aware of a decrippled FAT32 driver for windows.

Boot a linux CD on your PC and use it to copy the BW disk contents into your normal PC disk (or another USB disk).

meppy · Post by **meppy** » Sat Jul 28, 2012 09:19

Thanks I was starting to figure it was something like that. Reads ok under OS-X on my MBA so I will just copy from there, thanks. Now if only my old ReadyNAS wasnt crashing!

prl · Post by **prl** » Sat Jul 28, 2012 13:09

IanB is correct about the situation with the FAT32 on Windows. Windows won't recognise HDD volumes formatted as FAT32 but with a larger than allowed cluster size, and it's even been reported in the forum that it can corrupt disks formatted that way.

The cluster size used on Beyonwiz recording HDDs is 512 Kibytes (= 512x2^10 bytes = 524288 bytes ~= 524.3 kbytes). The maximum allowed cluster size in Windows is 64 Kibytes (= 64 * 2^10 bytes = 65536 bytes ~= 65.5 kbytes).

Beyonwiz recording HDDs can be accessed from either OS X or Linux without limitation on the cluster size beyond the limitation imposed by number of bits in the FAT23 headers that are allowed for its description. That hard limit is 512 kibyte. Since the Beyonwiz runs a Linux variant (uClinux), it's also not limited to the Windows upper limit.