Hy,

i have one big problem, maybe somebody help me.

I have one IDE disk adapted with Cooler Master Xcraft Case (IDE->USB) for my LG LCD TV TimeMachine2. This TV write the television shows to an internal hd and with a usb hdd i can copy these show's to a usb hdd but with one big problem, the hdd only reading by TV.

When i plug the usb hd in TV one formating to hd is applied. I formated the hd in FAT32 but the TV only read in this format. If i need write shows to them, the TV formating the drive again.

The format applied from TV is not recognized by Linux or Windows. After many tests i think the format from TV is Raw mode. In case, for many tools, the driver is showing a FAT32 system, but not mounting correctly. In windows the drive is same but operating system question for formating the driver.

Is a any way to read these drive?
Sorry for my english, i am brazilian.

Tks a lot.

Some information about these driver USB HDD:

i try many tools, and from windows, the cnwrecovery tool tell me, and show me the files probally i want (LGE_TX000x), but not save their. Its on raw mode, of course, i think the drive is on raw mode.

dmesg:
usb 1-8: new high speed USB device using ehci_hcd and address 3
usb 1-8: configuration #1 chosen from 1 choice
scsi5 : SCSI emulation for USB Mass Storage devices
usb-storage: device found at 3
usb-storage: waiting for device to settle before scanning
usb 1-8: New USB device found, idVendor=13fd, idProduct=0540
usb 1-8: New USB device strings: Mfr=1, Product=2, SerialNumber=3
usb 1-8: Product: ST340015A
usb 1-8: Manufacturer: Initio
usb 1-8: SerialNumber: 0010100540000033
scsi 5:0:0:0: Direct-Access Initio ST340015A 2.59 PQ: 0 ANSI: 0
sd 5:0:0:0: [sdc] 78165360 512-byte hardware sectors (40021 MB)
sd 5:0:0:0: [sdc] Write Protect is off
sd 5:0:0:0: [sdc] Mode Sense: 23 00 00 00
sd 5:0:0:0: [sdc] Assuming drive cache: write through
sd 5:0:0:0: [sdc] 78165360 512-byte hardware sectors (40021 MB)
sd 5:0:0:0: [sdc] Write Protect is off
sd 5:0:0:0: [sdc] Mode Sense: 23 00 00 00
sd 5:0:0:0: [sdc] Assuming drive cache: write through
sdc: sdc1
sd 5:0:0:0: [sdc] Attached SCSI disk
sd 5:0:0:0: Attached scsi generic sg3 type 0
usb-storage: device scan complete


fdisk /dev/sdc:
Disk /dev/sdc: 40.0 GB, 40020664320 bytes
1 heads, 32 sectors/track, 2442667 cylinders
Units = cilindros of 32 * 512 = 16384 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x36fc27cd

Dispositivo Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sdc1 * 1 2442625 39081984 c W95 FAT32 (LBA)
Partition 1 does not end on cylinder boundary.

mount -t vfat /dev/sdc /mnt/hdd or
mount -t vfat /dev/sdc1 /mnt/hdd:
mount: wrong fs type, bad option, bad superblock on /dev/sdc1,
missing codepage or helper program, or other error
In some cases useful info is found in syslog - try
dmesg | tail or so

dmesg after try mount /dev/sdc:
FAT: bogus number of reserved sectors
VFS: Can't find a valid FAT filesystem on dev sdc.

dmesg after try mount /dev/sdc1:
FAT: bogus sectors per cluster 65
VFS: Can't find a valid FAT filesystem on dev sdc1

cfdisk:
cfdisk (util-linux-ng 2.13.1)
Disk: /dev/sdc
Size: 40020664320 bytes, 40.0 GB
Heads: 1 Sectors per Track: 32 Cylinders: 2442667
Name Options Type Part. Type SA [Rótulo] Size (MB)
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
sdc1 Init,Primary W95 FAT32 (LBA) 40019,96*
Pri/lóg Free Space 0,71*

I dunno, but I would try using foremost on it and see what kind of data it finds:
http://foremost.sourceforge.net/

I think even if it is written raw, without a filesystem it may be able to recover the file. Maybe not, try it anyway.

If it is written raw, then someplace on the drive there has to be a directory telling what is written where. If you can find and read that directory, then you will know how and where to pick up the raw data for the TV shows that are stored. If you can do this, then using dd you can write them to a file in a conventional filesystem.

Whether or not you then could read them, I cannot say.

Tks for reply,


H_TeXMeX_H: the foremost is great software, but his find some files, in case from the oldest partition or other options, nothing from the LG formating, and his files types is very limited. The files i searching don't have normally extension. (i don't what extensions are, but i know these files exists)


jiml8: I used dd after, create on file image, but how i can mount these image? I need pass to dd one argument to create this "conventional filesystem". In really, i don't ideia where are these files or directories. I try 'dd if=/dev/sdc1 of=image bs=512'. I lose anything?
The mount of image file, in loop, has same result of mount "vfat" for these disk. "wrong....."

Tks a lot

IN TIME: I read about /dev/raw/rawctl but not really work for me (i don't know if the right direction for the problem but if can write raw devices, of course, read raw devices i think). I try use it on OpenSuse 11.0 but with no result, in case the raw /dev/raw/raw1 /dev/sdc1 not work, some erros with file don't exist.

The manual (for the {32,37,42,47,52}LB5R* lcd models) says
and
So I think the format of your hard disk drive should be FAT32.
What happens if you format your HDD to FAT32 under Windows, copy some *.avi, *.mp3, *.jpg on it and plug it into the TV's USB port?
Do it show these files or do it ask you to format the USB HDD?

Well yes the IDE standard is very well documented and easy to implement on a variety of hardware with or without a filesystem. if a product is designed to read and write to a drive without a filesystem it can simplify the code needed to use the drive; it just uses the drive as a big place to store 1s and 0s. since they never intended for you to take the drive out or for anything to have to read this drive except the tv that wrote to it in the first place. they probably made things easy for them not you. that being said I must concur with H_TeXMeX_H you can probibly still get your tv shows by making an image of the drive with dd and then filecarving this image with foremost to find known file types.

Last I looked Windoze wouldn't format fat32 bigger than 32 Gig - do it from Linux

You're right! The graphical formating tool is restricted to 32 GByte, but the command line tool isn't.

Hy,

ne pas:Don't. How i explain in 1st post, the TV read from FAT32 formated (on windows 98 or xp or by linux) but not write directly to these file system. For that, TV format the HDD and after write to them. In fact, the windows 98, i can't remember the command, says that HDD is a RAW file system (w98 is the only system tell me this at the moment).
In fact, my model is 32LB9RTB. I read in brazilian forums that the oldest models (32LB5TRB in case) has (from some post) ext3 file system, but probally in my model the format has change.


johnson_steve: I concur with you, they made easy things, but my head don't believe the Linux won't read (show me) in easy way the files in HDD. Linux have many file systems support but not for RAW mode? I try foremost directly to HDD but has find many file from oldest partitions. I take different results if i try that to one image from dd?

Tks a lot for help, but i need more ideias.

raw isn't a filesystem, mode or standard of any kind. it just means the structure of the data on the drive doesn't comply to any known system because they invented their own. there may not even be files as you know them. filecarving would be able to find and extract the video (I'd guess mpeg2 or mpeg4) streams from an image file so that you can convert them into files you can use.

There is no defined raw filesystem standard. IMO The TV is just basically writing binary data to the drive. The data may or may not be in a familiar file format that could be detected by foremost or some other tool but probably not. As suggest you could use dd to write the data to a regular filesystem then try to reverse engineer it into a common file format.

You could ask the TV manufacture for the data format but doubtful that they will respond to your inquires. I have designed equipment that writes to a raw partition and the advantage is that if power is removed one might loose data but it is impossible to corrupt the it since there no file system.