Supported partition formats for external hard drive on MicroHD?

[. Raine]

Does anyone know what partition formats the MicroHD supports for an external hard drive drive for recording? My MicroHD will recognize the drive formatted NTFS but says "no record partition" when trying to record. Formatted ExFAT, the Micro won't even recognize the drive.

Thanks!

 

[primestar31]

I believe Fat32 and NTFS. 2TB max, single partition

 

[. Raine]

huh. I don't know what the problem was, but it's working now. I partitioned and formatted it as NTFS and tried it, wouldn't work. I repartitioned it and reformatted it ExFAT and that didn't work. I was going to try FAT32 but the computer wasn't giving me that as a option, so I partitioned and formatted it as NTSC again and it worked. maybe the drive's going bad.

 

[primestar31]

huh. I don't know what the problem was, but it's working now. I partitioned and formatted it as NTFS and tried it, wouldn't work. I repartitioned it and reformatted it ExFAT and that didn't work. I was going to try FAT32 but the computer wasn't giving me that as a option, so I partitioned and formatted it as NTSC again and it worked. maybe the drive's going bad.

Did you do a FULL format, or a QUICK format? Mine worked on Full, but not Quick.

 

[. Raine]

Did you do a FULL format, or a QUICK format? Mine worked on Full, but not Quick.

I did do a quick format, that's probably what the problem was. I checked the drive and it all tests out fine and I recorded three shows on it last night with no problems. I'll have to keep that in mind to do a full format, this drive was just a small 40 gb one to test it out, I'm going to use a bigger one now that I know it works good.

I was surprised, I recorded an episode of the Honeymooners, Twilight Zone and Mission Impossible and it only used up 3.44 gb on the drive and the quality was still good. the only thing I wasn't crazy about is it recorded in TS format and some of the stuff that I'll record I'll dump onto a NAS for the WMC and Roku, but I'm pretty sure TS is Mpeg2, so it's not really a problem there.

 

[Lone Gunman]

Wait until you get hold of some HD programming! One hour episodes of The Blacklist on NBC last winter were up over 6GB PER EPISODE and they record in TS format also, which is a PITA if you want to convert them to something else.

I have to format my drives in FAT32 using a Windows XP install disk as the AZBox receivers don't work well with NTFS.

 

[bpalone]

Lone Gunman and others, you might want to try GParted. It is a live Linux cd image that will partition and format a drive. A lot easier than using a XP install disk. I haven't tried with a disk for a receiver but have used it quite a bit for all other things.

Unless, they have taken away FAT32, it would even do that and NTFS.

 

[. Raine]

Didn't know there was a live CD for GParted, thanks Bpalone, I'm gonna download that! They have FAT32 still listed as an option in the description too.

Wait until you get hold of some HD programming! One hour episodes of The Blacklist on NBC last winter were up over 6GB PER EPISODE and they record in TS format also, which is a PITA if you want to convert them to something else.

I have to format my drives in FAT32 using a Windows XP install disk as the AZBox receivers don't work well with NTFS.

Nooo, 6 Gb, that sounds like WMC! I record an hour or two in WMC and it's 4 - 12 GB and in the stupid WTV format. Didn't think of HD!

 

[Lone Gunman]

Lone Gunman and others, you might want to try GParted. It is a live Linux cd image that will partition and format a drive. A lot easier than using a XP install disk. I haven't tried with a disk for a receiver but have used it quite a bit for all other things.

Unless, they have taken away FAT32, it would even do that and NTFS.

Well, I did download that newest version of GParted back last month from Distrowatch.com but haven't burned that ISO to CD yet. I'm so use to using the Win XP install disk for formatting that it's really easy for me so I guess I'll stick with what's working for now. If I get around to burning GParted to CD I'll have a look to see how it works though.

 

[. Raine]

I have a new, odd issue with recording on the Micro HD and am wondering if anyone else has run into this or not.

Twice now, recording something new has messed up two of my old recordings. An example, last night I recorded a Mission Impossible episode off of MeTV and when it'd finished, a previous recording of Star Trek and one of Twilight Zone will no longer play.

Both files that won't play show the correct file size and nothing obvious is wrong with them, but if I try to play them it shows only a blue screen, no sound and plays through it at a really fast speed, like a minute or two for an hour long recording, where as before the new recording, they'd played fine. If I highlight one of them in the list it shows just blue instead of an still image of the first frame.

this is the second time it's done this, the first time I'd just figured, oh well, and deleted the bad files. Anyone have any ideas why it is doing this?

There's plenty of room left on the drive and I have no timers set for recording, all manual recordings. I haven't yet tried another hard drive or tried playing the files on something else.

I just went and hooked up the drive to a computer and the files play fine on the computer and the drive checks out ok, don't understand what the problem is.

 

[Titanium]

I have run disk first aid on the drive and usually have found indexing errors that are fixed. Once the repair is done, the files then play back fine.

 

[. Raine]

I have run disk first aid on the drive and usually have found indexing errors that are fixed. Once the repair is done, the files then play back fine.

Thanks, Brian, when you say disk first aid, do you mean the Mac program, disk first aid? I don't have a Mac up and running right here at the moment but I could load it up in an emulator.

Indexing errors make sense, I'll try re-indexing the drive, Thanks, Brian!

 

[Titanium]

Sorry, meant a disk repair program, not necessarily OS specific.

 

[Lone Gunman]

Regarding partitioning and formatting of large drives for use in AZBox and other receivers that need FAT32, I found out the other day that the Linux Mint 17 Live DVD has disk tools that will do both, ie, partition the drive and also format it in pretty much any format you want. Go to "Menu" > "Preferences" > "Disks" and click on the little gear picture right below the drive you want to work on and you get the tools menu.

Gparted is also available on that Live DVD and you can get to that one by going to "Menu" > "Administration" > "GParted"

Previous formatting of large drives in FAT32 using Windows tools took a long time but with this tool in Linux it only takes seconds.

One word of caution though, you might want to disconnect your main hard drive to make sure you don't format the WRONG one! Been there, done that one a long time ago!!

 

[pacificrim]

I had this issue more than once with my MicroHD and it only affected certain recordings with no pattern in terms of stream type, recording date, etc. I tried disk repair programs but they found no issues. The videos would not play on the MicroHD (blue screen only) but would play fine on a pc or mac. I gave up on the MicroHD, moved on to Alien2 and have not encountered any problems since with those drives.

 

[. Raine]

Disk repair/check didn't do it, nor re-indexing. I have another Hard Drive hooked to it now to see if that makes a difference.

 

[primestar31]

Disk repair/check didn't do it, nor re-indexing. I have another Hard Drive hooked to it now to see if that makes a difference.

I had this issue about 1 year ago. I just copied all the programs to another drive, did a FULL format of this drive on my Windows 7 pc, (it took like 8 hours for 500Gb's) and copied the programs back. It's been working fine again ever since.

 

[. Raine]

I had this issue about 1 year ago. I just copied all the programs to another drive, did a FULL format of this drive on my Windows 7 pc, (it took like 8 hours for 500Gb's) and copied the programs back. It's been working fine again ever since.

I will try that! I remember now that you'd posted about doing a full format when I was having trouble with the Micro recognizing the drive but I'm pretty sure that I never actually did it because after the second quick format the Miicro had recognized it!

Thanks, Primestar, I'm gonna give that a try. It's only a 40 GB drive, so it shouldn't take very long.

 

[. Raine]

I had this issue about 1 year ago. I just copied all the programs to another drive, did a FULL format of this drive on my Windows 7 pc, (it took like 8 hours for 500Gb's) and copied the programs back. It's been working fine again ever since.

That seems to have done it, Primestar! I've done twelve recordings, renamed a few of them, no problems. Thanks!