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    Hard drive from a pvr

    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.
    Last edited by davg; 09-20-2012, 08:17 PM.

    #2
    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.

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      #3
      Re: Hard drive from a pvr

      I can only think to try tools from the disks maker.
      My pc
      CPU : AMD PHENOM II x4 @ 3.5Ghz
      MB : ASUS M4A89TD PRO USB3
      RAM : Kingston ValueRAM 16gb DDR3
      PSU : Cooler Master 850W Silent Pro
      GPU : ATI Radeon HD 6850

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        #4
        Re: Hard drive from a pvr

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

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          #5
          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!
          Last edited by Hondaman; 09-23-2012, 12:01 PM.

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            #6
            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.

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              #7
              Re: Hard drive from a pvr

              Originally posted by joshnz View Post
              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

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                #8
                Re: Hard drive from a pvr

                Originally posted by Time2Retire View Post
                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

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                  #9
                  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/

                  Comment


                    #10
                    Re: Hard drive from a pvr

                    Originally posted by noppa View Post
                    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.

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                      #11
                      Re: Hard drive from a pvr

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

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                        #12
                        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?

                        Comment


                          #13
                          Re: Hard drive from a pvr

                          Originally posted by t.j. View Post
                          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?

                          Comment


                            #14
                            Re: Hard drive from a pvr

                            Originally posted by noppa View Post
                            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?

                            Comment


                              #15
                              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.
                              My first choice in quality Japanese electrolytics is Nippon Chemi-Con, which has been in business since 1931... the quality of electronics is dependent on the quality of the electrolytics.

                              Comment


                                #16
                                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

                                Comment


                                  #17
                                  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!

                                  Comment


                                    #18
                                    Re: Hard drive from a pvr

                                    Originally posted by noppa View Post
                                    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?

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                                      #19
                                      Re: Hard drive from a pvr

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

                                      Comment


                                        #20
                                        Re: Hard drive from a pvr

                                        Originally posted by OniJon View Post
                                        Thanks but as I understand it the ATA password is part of the disk firmware and erasing a disk will not do it..

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