To be on the safe side, using Partition Master, I actually created 4 partitions on the drive, as suggested here: http://www.avforums.com/forums/freesat/1274061-humax-foxsat-hdr-1tb-hard-drive-upgrade.html

(For future reference, the sizes need to be entered in Mb, so they are: 2058Mb (2.01Gb), 102Mb (101.98Mb), 950671Mb (928.39Gb), 1034Mb (1.01Gb) )

I then formatted each partition as primary EXT3 and with a cluster size of 4Kb. (Initially, I used the default of 1Kb cluster size, but this was a mistake – with the approx 928.39Gb partition, approx. 50% – over 400Gb – became used on the ‘empty’ partition. The 4k cluster size reduced the used space to about 1.7% of the total space. )

However, still no joy – the box boots fine but just doesn’t recognise the HDD. Message says “HDD not recognised. Please check your HDD”.

So, I reformatted the drive with a single partition for the full size of the disc, Primary EXT3.

The disc is an ‘advanced format’ drive, which apparently need special formatting to work to their full efficiency, so the problem may be something to do with that, because the Foxsat was designed before Advance Format drives were available. However, the Adv F drives have been around for a few years, so I imagine that earlier WD AVGP drives are also Adv F and have worked OK in the Foxsat. Also, the advance formatting only helps create the best efficiency; I get the impression that the disc should still be recognised but possibly not full capacity or fastest access. The only other thing I can think of is that it is SATA III, but similar logic applies – I imagine that it should still be recognised even if not at its most efficient. http://www.wdc.com/global/products/features/?id=7&language=1

So…

Maybe some Linux expert has got this drive working, otherwise, I think I’ve just got a new large external drive!

Is there a recent list of drives that are known to work? I’ve seen a few mentioned, but they all seemed to be out of date – the drives are no longer available.

@son_t thanks for your reply. I’m struggling a little to take in all the info because it’s spread around a number of posts, and I’m not a Linux user. So you had trouble with an AF drive but once formatted correctly it worked OK in the Foxsat? I must admit I’m feeling cautious – all the documentation seems to imply that the drive should still be recognised, but perhaps not optimally. Which means that the problem I get – completely unrecognised – seems like a different problem. (My health is not so good, so it’s a bit of an effort to dismantle the Humax, and I’m not sure I could handle another, this time more-complicated, session of formatting the drive, swapping it in and finding the dreaded ‘not found’ message )

In summary, you are suggesting using GParted to partion as per the second half of your post 399? If so, looks like there’s quite a few things I need to learn.