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I’ve had problems with my 9200t for some few months, which I’ve put up with, but now it seems that I can’t copy files off. Using Media Controller 1.5, I always get the message “ERROR: failed to begin file transfer for…” followed by a filename, for whatever I try to transfer. I tried both XP and Windows 7, and two different USB leads, so I presume that the problem is the Humax.
The other problems have mostly been to do with recording – often it would fail to record at all, or occasionally a recorded program would cause the Humax to crash when played; but now it has started to create duplicate entries for one program where there should be several separate programs. For example, I have four identically-named entries which, when played, are all the one recently-repeated Bowie documentary – but all four are the same item, and the title and date it’s repeatedly saved under is wrong. There should be several different programs there, but there’s just the same repeated program four times over.
I’d be grateful for all suggestions… am hoping not to have to reformat… a vain hope I suspect…
Jason
jason_z – 1 hour ago »
There should be several different programs there, but there’s just the same repeated program four times over.
These are classic signs of a corrupt file system. Sorry to be the bearer of bad tidings but if you don’t do something soon the list of recorded programs will be lost. If Media Controller won’t work, your options are to watch any important recordings or open up the Humax and connect the hard drive direct to a PC and use humaxrw to copy off the recordings before formatting.
If Media Controller won’t work, your options are to watch any important recordings or open up the Humax and connect the hard drive direct to a PC and use humaxrw to copy off the recordings before formatting.
Thanks. Oh well. In another post somewhere I saw a link to the type of lead I need to use humaxrw, but now I’ve lost it. Can you please direct me to what I need? I guess I have to take the hard drive out of the Humax?
Jason
jason_z – 7 minutes ago »
In another post somewhere I saw a link to the type of lead I need to use humaxrw, but now I’ve lost it. Can you please direct me to what I need? I guess I have to take the hard drive out of the Humax?
You need a USB to IDE adapter such as Link to eBay. It is a while since I have done it; it may be possible with the drive in position but if not it is only four screws to remove it.
Thanks Martin. I have bought a USB-IDE adapter with plug and connected it. I now have a problem that I’m having trouble diagnosing… the drive is on but I don’t know if the PC can see it. All I get for each drive number is:
C:humaxrwdir>humaxrw 1: -r -l
Partition table: Permission denied
I ran ‘cmd’ as administrator and for good measure even logged on directly as Administrator too (i.e. I made that account active, which seems to be a minor hack on this OS, Windows 7). I am not sure if there is really a permissions problem or if the PC just can’t see the drive. I can’t see anything that looks like it in Disk Management. I doubt that the Humax drive is so completely broken yet that it can’t be read at all.
Is my adapter not working, or does it require some secret drivers (I rebooted just in case)? I don’t know how to tell…
jason_z – 1 hour ago »
I have bought a USB-IDE adapter with plug and connected it.
It is along time since I have done this. The drive will have a jumper to say whether it Master, Slave or Cable Select mode. Try changing the jumper so that it is Master and try again (make sure you note how it is originally so that you can put it back as it was afterwards). Also my adapter has a label that I have taped to the side saying ” Ensure IDE adapter plug is central in drive data connector”; I think with my adapter it is possible to plug it into the drive and connect to the wrong pins.
Thanks. I have just disconnected it, but two more things happened after I wrote:
(1) Windows 7 reported that it had detected the drive and that it was ready to use, but I still couldn’t access it. However, the same message reported that the drivers for the adapter couldn’t be installed. It’s possible to attach the adapter upside-down, but I aligned a gap at the top which made me think I had it the right way up. But now I can’t get the message to re-appear. It seemed to happen when I pushed the adapter more firmly onto the drive.
(2) I did try the jumper after getting the above message anyway. I had to go dig one out of a drawer (and was amazed I was successful at finding one, as the Humax doesn’t have one). But setting it to master did nothing.
I wonder if the adapter, which arrived in a jiffy bag, is faulty.
At least it’s win7 and not windows 8. XP would have been easier.
It’s a while since I’ve looked at this; however graphically you should be able to see the attached disk via:
start, control panel, system and security, administrative tools, computer management, storage, disk management
Under no circumstances should you allow windows to format or do anything to recognise the attached drive as it will destroy the partition table
You should be able to get the similar information using ‘diskpart’ from a cmd window and issue the command ‘list disk’
be very careful, disk 0 is normally your pc’s windows main disk. If you can’t see the attached drive then neither can the humaxrwdir program
If the disk cannot be seen, double check the usb/ide adapter, you should have the ide connector plugged into the drive, it’s easy to mis-align pins here, the drive’s power connector should also be plugged in (4pin plug) and obviously the usb into the computer. You should be able to hear and/or feel the drive spinning up when power is supplied.
The usb/ide adapter may or maynot have come with a driver cd, quite often a mini sized disk. the first time the usb was plugged in you should have got a prompt from windows to install a driver if necessary. Check:
start, control panel, hardware and sound, device manager
to see if you have any yellow exclamation marks which may show a problem with the attached usb adapter. In this case remove the driver and start again using the supplied usb/ide adapter cd if necessary.
In an ideal world you may have an old ide drive knocking around which you could use for testing purposes. Normally these things work with a bit of help and perseverance
I’ve just seen Martin’s post and yes, if you can set the drive jumper for master, I’d forgotten about that and it is dead easy to mis-align the ide connector or connect upside down if the tab is missing.
If the pc can see the drive and humaxrwdir can’t then try running humaxrwdir in xp compatibility mode.
If the pc can’t see the drive then you could boot into a linux live system to test and check; however the steps involved are complicated.
Just seen your post now Jason,
it’s unlikely that the adapter is faulty, remove/uninstall the driver/hardware from device manager and use the supplied one, if supplied on disk, or find a driver that does work, windows needs to see the drive properly before anything else will work
good luck
Thanks, Damian and Martin. I should have mentioned that I do have exclamation marks in yellow triangles in Device Manager. I have now tried on three systems:
Windows 7 Ultimate – device appears as two items in Device Manager, one of them (I think) PCI Serial Port, then another below it, also called PCI something, both with exclamation marks.
Windows XP – nothing happened that I could see.
Windows 7 Starter – device appears as USB Mass Storage in Device Manager, with exclamation mark.
I have never yet seen the disk come up in Disk Management, alas.
The reason I suspected the adapter is that it arrived poorly packaged (so could have been damaged in transit) and is obviously of low quality – the kettle lead power cable falls out of the power brick! There is no driver CD, though Windows 7 in both cases insists that it needs a driver.
I have tried the jumper on Master though I think I might also try Cable Select.
I don’t really want to do the transfer on XP as my XP machine’s hard drive is too small for the Humax contents, but I will have another go at that tonight.
I do have an IDE disk I could try the adapater on, although it might be faulty. I might try that too.
HI Jason,
if it’s got a yellow exclamation mark against the device then it won’t work.
disconnect the usb plug, remove/uninstall the device and the device/hardware/driver from device manager, make sure any driver is removed otherwise windows will just try and use it the next time. A reboot might help next.
These adapters can get confused depending on the order they’re connected up in.
With the pc running and usb plug still disconnected.
Connect the ide adapter to the drive, and then connect the power supply 4 pin plug and power up the drive, wait a few seconds, the drive may spin up, the drive and adapter need a few seconds to sort themselves out, and only then connect the usb cable to the pc. (if the drive hasn’t already spun up it may spin when plugging the usb cable into the pc)
when plugging the usb cable/plug into the pc, windows should recognise that a new device has been connected. It will either find a driver automatically and should work or ask for a driver in which case you’re stuffed as you don’t have a driver cd.
If it’s the latter then I’d send the thing back. There are plenty of similar devices on ebay and via other stockists. If you’ve a multimeter handy you could check for 12v and 5v on the 4pin power connector if you suspect the psu.
It is unusual for these things not to work; however there’s always the exception.
What you’re looking for, I’d assume, is the usb mass storage that you saw under win7 starter, quite why it’s different under ultimate is a concern. You should not have any exclamation marks in device manager and it may help to check the main board manufacturer’s website for firmware/driver updates or the computer manufacturer if it’s a large company, along with service pack 1 for win7 plus any other updates as necessary.
IIRC from when people were starting to mod the 9200t there were several USB-IDE adapters that failed to work correctly. I had one sent to me for testing where the 2.5 inch drive connector worked but not the 3.5 inch side.
I think it should show up as USB to ATAPI bridge in Device Manager and then the drive as a separate item, NB as Damian says the drive must not be initialised by windows. It must not be allocated a drive letter. It can only be read by humaxrw.
Thank you all so much – didn’t expect to have three people helping me – this is great!
I almost have it working. I made two changes last night:
(1) I had made a mistake with the jumper. The Humax drive *did* already have a jumper on, which set it as cable select. I didn’t see it before as it was pushed very far in. So, my adding a second jumper (late on in my attempts) doubtless made the drive unusable at that stage.
(2) On the two Windows 7 systems, I installed in Windows Update any optional update that mentioned drivers. I think they were called (on both machines) User-Mode Drivers and Kernel-Mode Drivers. I’m pretty sure that I had to reboot twice before these took effect.
I also followed Damian’s instructions about what order to do things in. Despite the power lead, the Humax disk seemed inactive until I plugged the USB cable into the PC, at which point it audibly spun up.
Windows 7 Ultimate behaved weirdly, listing my Humax drive *twice* (!) as Disk 5: under Disk Management, and not letting me access it with humaxrw. It also tried to get me to initialise my disk (don’t worry, I said no). My netbook running 7 Starter, however, behaved well: it showed me a single drive Disk 1: in Disk Management and, hooray, allowed me to list my Humax files!
While I was making space on the Windows file system to do some transferring, the Humax disk went to sleep and was deemed as USB Device Not Recognised when I plugged it in a second time. I guess that Windows needed a reboot, but at this stage it was quite late to do more work on it.
As a next step, a colleague is going to lend me his USB-IDE adapter and then I will see if I fare any better with a better model…
An update… and alas another problem.
I used my colleague’s superior IDE-to-USB adapter to copy off all the files. I then figured that I have to put the drive back into the Humax to format it, before copying anything back on. However, the Humax doesn’t see the drive now. I believe I’ve put the jumper setting back to how it was (Cable Select) and the cables look attached right – I think the drive spins up briefly when the Humax is powered on. But the Humax onscreen menu option ‘Recorded Programmes’ is gone. Instead, at the bottom, ‘Games’ is now there instead. If I disconnect the drive and restart the Humax, the onscreen display looks the same as it does if the drive is connected, so I assume that the Humax can’t see the drive.
I reseated the power and IDE connections to no avail. Do you think that Windows 7 has done something to the drive? The data did seem to come off okay. I just need to reformat it… and persuade the Humax to see it again.
I wouldn’t think win7 has done anything to the drive.
You get the games menu when the 9200T can’t find the drive.
I’m not too sure about cable select CS, I’d be tempted to use master.
One of the first things I did with my 9200 when I got it many years ago was to put a bigger drive in it. Ever since then when I power it on at the back it always goes into the games menu, putting it into standby and restarting it got the drive visible again and it would start up normally.
I never did get to the bottom of it and I lived with the work around of starting it twice if ever the power had gone off. The original drive always worked properly though during testing. I can’t remember whether I might have manually redone the partition table on the new drive, but none of this should be necessary with your original drive.
My advice, set the jumper for master, unless somebody knows for sure that it should be different, check the ide pins and make sure none are bent, re-install in the 9200t taking particular care with the ide connector, power up and if necessary power cycle it and/or in and out of standby a couple of times if you get the games menu. Always wait 10 – 15 seconds between powering up and down.
If this doesn’t work, and you’ve already rescued your files, then without linux I think you should try formatting it to fat32 with windows. Make sure it’s a full format and not quick, also run any disk error checking option. If it’s clean with windows then I don’t see why it shouldn’t work when re-installed in the 9200t, you should get a message asking to format it. If you do get to formatting it; let it finish, it can take a while.
damian – 5 minutes ago »
I’m not too sure about cable select CS, I’d be tempted to use master.
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My recollection is that the correct setting is cable select. I agree with the advice to check for bent pins.
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