Hard drive from Set Top Box recovery.

horizn · 06-02-2016, 01:53 PM

Hi,
I have two two hard drives removed from working Set Top Boxes. The problem with these hdd's is that both were formatted in some bizarre way:

Code:

[813521.481250] scsi 21:0:0:0: Direct-Access                                    PQ: 0 ANSI: 2 CCS
[813521.481441] sd 21:0:0:0: Attached scsi generic sg3 type 0
[813521.481612] sd 21:0:0:0: [sdc] Very big device. Trying to use READ CAPACITY(16).
[813521.481753] sd 21:0:0:0: [sdc] 72057594037927936 512-byte logical blocks: (0 B/0 B)
[813521.481958] sd 21:0:0:0: [sdc] Write Protect is off
[813521.481959] sd 21:0:0:0: [sdc] Mode Sense: 28 00 00 00
[813521.482177] sd 21:0:0:0: [sdc] No Caching mode page found
[813521.482179] sd 21:0:0:0: [sdc] Assuming drive cache: write through                                                                                                                                     
[813521.482447] sd 21:0:0:0: [sdc] Very big device. Trying to use READ CAPACITY(16).
[813521.483012]  sdc: unknown partition table
[813521.483329] sd 21:0:0:0: [sdc] Very big device. Trying to use READ CAPACITY(16).
[813521.483867] sd 21:0:0:0: [sdc] Attached SCSI disk
[813521.626031] sd 21:0:0:0: [sdc] Unhandled sense code
[813521.626035] sd 21:0:0:0: [sdc]

I've tried gdisk, but it won't save changes as well as dd won't work because there is no such device /dev/sdc.

Any idea how to fix that?

michaelk · 06-03-2016, 11:16 AM

What is the end goal for the disks?

From the information provided it does appear the drive is recognized as /dev/sdc. Are you running the commands as root or using sudo? The only thing that appears unusual is that it does not have a partition table which for a set top box is not uncommon.

beachboy2 · 06-03-2016, 11:56 AM

horizn,

I believe that these PVR hard drives are usually formatted as ext3.

In any event, use a SATA to USB adapter, such as this:
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Proxima-Dir.../dp/B0098AF3U0

and connect the PVR drive to a USB port on your Linux PC.

Create a Gparted CD:
http://gparted.org/

Then boot your PC and format the PVR drive as required (ext4 is the usual one for Linux, or NTFS to be read by both Linux and Windows).

EDIT

This may be relevant if they are Advanced Format drives:

http://askubuntu.com/questions/33769...tor-hard-drive

Quote:

Also using parted to create partition starting from 0 which is a mistake. You need to start the first partition on sector 2048 which is equivalent to 1MiB so that the partitions on the disk are aligned for optimal performance.
So, change the unit to MiB, print the disk details which will also print the disk size in MiB, and create the partition (if you only want single partition) starting from 1MiB and ending at the last MiB (or one before the last).
For example, a 3TB disk should have in reality something like 2,861,022 MiB. So creating a single partition spanning the whole disk on a disk device called /dev/sdX would be like (replace the X with the correct letter)

:

Code:

sudo parted /dev/sdX
unit MiB
mklabel gpt
print (to see the total size in MiB)
mkpart primary 1 2861022
quit

Quote:

If the disk size is few MiB more or less than 2861022 adjust the ending location.

That's it.
After that create the filesystem you want on the partition.