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I am a newbie, but have been reading the various threads regarding 1TByte External drives and it sounds as though the Humax HD T2 will format the external drive without resorting to using Linux tools. Has anyone tried using the Humax to format a 2TByte external drive? I ask because looking at the Samsung drive there is only £10 difference in cost if I go for the larger 2 TByte model. However . . .
Apologies if this question has been answered elswhere.
Thanks
AFAIK, the Humax will only format up to and including 1TB. However, I believe that you can format the >1TB HDD in a PC (ext3) and that will work. I have never done this so my knowledge is limited.
My 1TB HDD was recognised and formatted in the Hummy OK, but I have read that this is the limit.
I have a HDR, not an HD.
Download GParted Live CD and boot up your PC using that and use GParted to format the drive to EXT3.
You can read Barry’s guide to formatting a USB stick to EXT3 here: http://myhumax.org/forum/topic/how-to-format-a-usb-device-to-ext3-noddys-guide
And my three blog posts on using GParted: here (using Ubuntu), here (using Slax) and here (using GParted), for a rough idea of how to format.
But don’t let the above overwhelm you, you just need to start up GParted, select the right hard disk and put a partition and EXT3 filesystem on it!
You might want to check out the Advanced Format Hard Drive post if you are purchasing one of these too.
Lastly! If you want to stick with Windows, you might want to try MiniTool’s Free Partition Manager to format your drive. I’ve had variable success with this so can’t confirm it will work correctly…
Wallace & son_t – I have found the tools you suggest so it’s time to buy a drive and give it a try. Many thanks for sharing your experience. I can practice with an old drive while I wait for delivery.
I had a look at the format of my existing external 100 Gbyte Drive I have been using with my Fox HD T2 before embarking on creating a 2Tbyte version and found that it only has one partition unlike those described in the Blogs.
Using Gparted it shows a single partition /dev/sdb1 file system ext3 label TV REC1 Size 111.79 GB Used 28 GB and a very small unallocated area of 2.49 MiB.
Does anyone know whether the drive format differs between the HDR and the HD?
The layout will be different. I suggested the links to familarise yourself with using GParted to format the disk.
I suspect you just need a single partition for the HD to record on, although I need someone else to confirm as I don’t have an HD box.
Barry or Graham?
son_t – that was great advice on GParted. I do like it when a tool does what it says on the tin!
Thanks
The drive has a single partition with two folders. One for the Video Content and the other for the time shift buffer. As my box has a 1TB drive the box formatted it and created the two folders. At a guess the box the box will create the video and timeshift folders if they don’t exist on a preformatted drive. One thing to note time shifting is turned off by default in the menus you have to turn it on. If you need the exact folder names I will have to connect the drive to my laptop to check.
Grahamlthompson – you have confirmed that I read Gparted correctly thanks. I didn’t want to get part way through this and find that I had missed 2 partitions.
Hi, does GParted do the same thing as Easeus Partition? I have used Easeus to create a 1tb ext3 partition (on a 2tb WD Elements drive) but the Humax reformatted it to show the whole drive (1.8tb). The Humax would then not allow the drive to being used as a pvr/for recording. I was wondering if it made a difference creating the partition in GParted compared to Easeus?
Any help would be greatly appreciated?
Maybe of no help but….
I have just formatted a 1.5TB drive (in a caddy) using GParted (Ubuntu live cd), and the HD recognised the drive and allowed me to set it for recording – free space was indicated to be 1.366 TB
Edit:
Recording tests both instant and scheduled appear to be working ok.
Hi, I swapped my 2TB for a 1TB as I could not get the 2TB to work. The GParted thing seemed a bit complicated for me. Thanks to everyone who replied.
Follow up to this.
WD Elements 2 TB Desktop HDD, formatted to ext 3 using GParted (Ubuntu live cd)
Connected to HD T2 and capacity is reported as 1848.1TB.
A couple of instant records and one scheduled timer have recorded ok.
Currently copying over recordings from previous drive, and will then use this 2 TB for a while.
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