Hard drive from a pvr

[davg]

I have a 250 gig hard drive from a 9200 pvr that I would like to uses as an external drive but I can't Initialize the drive. Are these drives locked and unusable in a pc? This drive will show up in disk management only but I am unable to do anything with it. What is up with this.

[davg]

Re: Hard drive from a pvr

I can't believe there is no discussion on this. I am sure there are others who wanted to use these drives rather than throw them out. I know there are a lot of smart people out there who know how. I do own the unit bought and paid for, just not supported by the service provider anymore.

[joshnz]

Re: Hard drive from a pvr

I can only think to try tools from the disks maker.

[kc8adu]

Re: Hard drive from a pvr

more info?
maybe its ata locked by the unit?bad?

[Hondaman]

Re: Hard drive from a pvr

I looked around. Here's another thread on this forum:

https://www.badcaps.net/forum/showthread.php?t=18402

(I did not know there was an ATA locking mechanism in any official standard. Wow.)

Apparently, "Bell", "Humax" and "Pansat" come up in google results, so this was sold under multiple brands. I think your chances of finding a solution are very good.

My first guess was "maybe there is NO partition table at all" like older Apple stuff (maybe OSX finally started requiring a partition table, I don't know). A proprietary file system would also make sense (Windows wouldn't recognize it).

Let us know how it turns out, and good luck!

[Time2Retire]

Re: Hard drive from a pvr

Unless you want to recover some of the recordings on the drive, I would try a stand-alone disk utility. I would recommend the GParted Live CD, just delete all partitions, create a new partition table, and create new partitions:

http://gparted.sourceforge.net/livecd.php

Make sure you are working on the correct drive. Maybe even go as far as unplugging all other hard drives before you boot the Live CD.

[davg]

Re: Hard drive from a pvr

I can only think to try tools from the disks maker.

Did that with SeaTools from Seagate site both Windows version and Dos. No luck

[davg]

Re: Hard drive from a pvr

Unless you want to recover some of the recordings on the drive, I would try a stand-alone disk utility. I would recommend the GParted Live CD, just delete all partitions, create a new partition table, and create new partitions:

http://gparted.sourceforge.net/livecd.php

Make sure you are working on the correct drive. Maybe even go as far as unplugging all other hard drives before you boot the Live CD.

Thanks will give it a try Nothing to lose

[noppa]

Re: Hard drive from a pvr

If the drive is locked with ATA password none of such tools will work.
Any command will be aborted by the drive.
Try to look at the drive with MHDD, it will tell you if
it's locked or not.
If you don't need data you can try a secure erase with MHDD.
Brand / Model of HD?
Take a look at this http://www.hddunlock.com/

[davg]

Re: Hard drive from a pvr

If the drive is locked with ATA password none of such tools will work.
Any command will be aborted by the drive.
Try to look at the drive with MHDD, it will tell you if
it's locked or not.
If you don't need data you can try a secure erase with MHDD.
Brand / Model of HD?
Take a look at this http://www.hddunlock.com/

It doesn't appear to be locked. If it is and it is going to cost 30.00 to have it unlocked it's not going to happen I will garbage it. Anyway it would appear they do have a secret I have tried several dos and windows based software even winhex and nothing seem to work. The disk do show up in SeaTools and disk management and winhex but that is as far as I get. It is driving me nuts.

[t.j.]

Re: Hard drive from a pvr

i scalp drives from pvr's all the time! if visible in disk management, just repartition it!

[noppa]

Re: Hard drive from a pvr

If it's not locked try to zerofill at least some megabytes
from LBA 0, i had some drives with corrupted MBR / partition
table that didn't initialize from windows and solved this way.
Also some drive with bad sector at the very beginning of the
disk may cause this.
I presume it's a seagate since you used Seatools,
does it pass quick test?
Can you show smart parameters?

[davg]

Re: Hard drive from a pvr

i scalp drives from pvr's all the time! if visible in disk management, just repartition it!

Before I can partition it I need to Initialize it and that is where the problem lies. Even though it shows up in disk management it is flagged and will not initialize?

[davg]

Re: Hard drive from a pvr

If it's not locked try to zerofill at least some megabytes
from LBA 0, i had some drives with corrupted MBR / partition
table that didn't initialize from windows and solved this way.
Also some drive with bad sector at the very beginning of the
disk may cause this.
I presume it's a seagate since you used Seatools,
does it pass quick test?
Can you show smart parameters?

Thanks noppa yes it is a Seagate ST3250820SCE. So what software did you use to zerofill from LBA 0? One program I used (and I am not sure now which because I tried so many) gave an Error LIBPARTED BUG FOUND: input/output error during read on dev/sda. I will not pass quick test in SeaTools. I do believe there may be some bad sectors at the beginning when I try to clean the disk in SeaTools it do list some bad sectors and gives me an option to try again or ignore? Not sure what choosing ignore will do?

[japlytic]

Re: Hard drive from a pvr

Some PVRs (mainly from providers) password protect the hard drive, and it is a possibility that some can keep the recordings in the host protected area.

[jsmoke]

Re: Hard drive from a pvr

you will not get this drive to work outside of the 9200 easily, will work in other ird's but not in pc easily

[noppa]

Re: Hard drive from a pvr

You can use Seatools to zerofill the drive, and i think you already did it
with the erase function.
I don't like seatools, if i remember correctly it doesn't tell you
if a drive is simply locked and fail any test.

I suggest you a quick way to point out if your drive is locked (and possibly healthy) or bad in some way.

Download MHDD from this site

http://hddguru.com/software/2005.10.02-MHDD/

and burn the iso to a CD-ROM (or use the floppy image)

Connect to your pc just the hard drive to test and a CD-DVD Rom
and then boot from it.
The drive MUST be connected to a true IDE channel, not RAID or
AHCI.
It will boot in plain DOS and will load MHDD in few seconds,
MHDD will scan all ATA channel and show you any drive connected.
Select the right drive by the number MHDD assigned to it and if
it is locked MHDD will show you it immediately with a warning
message.

Then press F8 and you will get the SMART information of the drive,
look for "reallocated sector count" and for "current pending sectors"
values that give a quick info if the drive is degrading.

Then press twice F4 and MHDD will start to scan the disk and
show you any bad or slow zone of your disk.

You can also use Hiren's Boot CD 15.1 from here

http://www.hirensbootcd.org/download/

it's a live cd that contains MHDD and a lots of free tools.

Good Luck!

[davg]

Re: Hard drive from a pvr

You can use Seatools to zerofill the drive, and i think you already did it
with the erase function.
I don't like seatools, if i remember correctly it doesn't tell you
if a drive is simply locked and fail any test.

I suggest you a quick way to point out if your drive is locked (and possibly healthy) or bad in some way.

Download MHDD from this site

http://hddguru.com/software/2005.10.02-MHDD/

and burn the iso to a CD-ROM (or use the floppy image)

Connect to your pc just the hard drive to test and a CD-DVD Rom
and then boot from it.
The drive MUST be connected to a true IDE channel, not RAID or
AHCI.
It will boot in plain DOS and will load MHDD in few seconds,
MHDD will scan all ATA channel and show you any drive connected.
Select the right drive by the number MHDD assigned to it and if
it is locked MHDD will show you it immediately with a warning
message.

Then press F8 and you will get the SMART information of the drive,
look for "reallocated sector count" and for "current pending sectors"
values that give a quick info if the drive is degrading.

Then press twice F4 and MHDD will start to scan the disk and
show you any bad or slow zone of your disk.

You can also use Hiren's Boot CD 15.1 from here

http://www.hirensbootcd.org/download/

it's a live cd that contains MHDD and a lots of free tools.

Good Luck!

Thanks nappa great info and it do show that the drive is password locked. Using mhdd to unlock requires a password that I can't provide?? Is there a default password? Is there some other way to unlock the drive without the high cost? Firmware update is one possibility but where can one find firmware for these drives?

[OniJon]

Re: Hard drive from a pvr

Try Killdisk
http://how-to-erase-hard-drive.com/

[davg]

Re: Hard drive from a pvr

Try Killdisk
http://how-to-erase-hard-drive.com/

Thanks but as I understand it the ATA password is part of the disk firmware and erasing a disk will not do it..