Reading files from Humax HDD on a PC

maf1970

In my experience trying to clone a disk to a smaller disk doesn't work. Normally it is like to like or smaller to larger.
Did you identify the old and failing Humax disk as ext3 ? Just because it didn't work for you doesn't mean to say it doesn't work at all.
PVR makers tend to encrypt all recordings to make it difficult for copies to be made. Since you found lost files then that is a clear indicator that the disk is going and in doing so probably corrupted your recordings. Did you verify that all were OK to watch in the first place or just assume that was the case because they were recorded?

If you liked the programmes so much then why not just buy the DVD/Blu-ray if available ?

Tony Norton

Hi maf1970,

I have cloned to a smaller disk in the past, there is a "proportional" option in the Acronis 'manual' option which works if there is sufficient space. I know that because I have even cloned system disks that way. The problem is that nothing I have tried enables me to read the file names, let alone copy them.

I even disconnected all my Windows drives, installed Linux Mint on a blank disk and, using that, tried to read the removed Humax HDD. Nothing doing. I do know that the files were valid because I watched a couple of the recordings the night before doing the Linux exercise. I think that Humax, as you said, have encrypted these files to a level that one cannot even see the titles. A sort of "B****r off. We're the only ones allowed to read our files!".

I haven't missed much by losing all the old recordings and, as I said before, nobody died. I did watch one of the programs I know I recorded, on 'On Demand' last night, and none of the others were that important. It was, however an interesting exercise, Kept me amused for a while.

Cheers
Tony N

Tony Norton

A minor problem. Fitted the new HDD. After 2 days it told me it was 95% full, which, of course, it couldn't possibly be. Removed said HDD and gave it a thorough test with Acronis Disk Director.
The disk checking option revealed that, after re-formatting, the new HDD obviously had a substantial amount of bad clusters. When it started the ETA of the finish was just under 5 hours. "Oh well, I can live with that, I'll just go and do something else". Checked the progress after about half an hour only to find that the ETA had gone up to 25 hours. Did some calculations on the number of clusters done against the total number of clusters, and found that we were only 12% of the way through. Watched it for a while. Nothing improved, in fact the ETA went up to 28 hours. My guess is that the extremely slow progress was due to Acronis endeavouring to repair the bad clusters. At that point I thought "enough is enough". The disk is going back to Amazon and the old one has gone back in the Humax. After a reset to factory defaults, formatting, checking and hooking up to my WiFi, it seems to be behaving OK. Wonder how a replacement is going to perform.

Tony N

Tony Norton

Time to close this discussion. Replacement HDD arrived, fitted, formatted, tested, A.O.K. Further comment would be superfluous.

Thanks to all for advice proffered.

Tony N.