Review of Manhattan RS-1933

[stone1150]

If you plug a 320 gig NTFS formatted drive into the Manhattan and the Manhattan does not see it THEN IT IS A PROBLEM WITH THE MANHATTAN. Especially when you reformat the drive as FAT32 and the receiver sees it.

Please do not call it a nonexistant problem, it's a problem with the Manhattan.

If it was a receiver problem, then I wouldn't see this after I plugged in a 500 gig NTFS formated drive.(see photo). Sorry but it is isolated to your setup... That is not a Manhattan or any other receiver problem any way you slice it. If it was a Manhattan problem, then NOBODY could plug in a ntfs drive and have it recognised. If everyone had the same trouble, then and only then it would be a Manhattan problem. Now what makes it so hard to understand that? I'm not picking on anyone here. Just pointing out that some "problems" are not in reality problems to begin with! Have a great day!

 

[stone1150]

And in case this was missed I will repost.....................

Now back to the hard drive.... Last night I erradicated a drive and plugged
it in.. Didn't see it. Just like any computer. My computer didn't see it until I
went to the "Disk management" area. I gave it a quick format in NTFS and then
plugged it in and the receiver saw it straight away. It has been my experiance
in the past that some drives that say they are "pre-formatted" simply do not
work until you format it for your machine weather it is a computer or a
receiver.

I had just posted that this morning and it seems that it was missed.................

 

[Anole]

The lack of available information, creates user errors that pass as receiver errors.
This hard drive/NTFS problem may well be one of them.

Not all NTFS is created equal...
Some months ago, I formatted an external 2tb drive in a USB box I built, on my Vista laptop.
After transferring 600gb of data over the LAN to it from my server, I changed drives in the server, and prepared to copy the data back.
Plugged the external USB 2tb into the server and it was not recognized.
This was a new variation on NTFS that the server didn't recognize.
Not wanting to take a chance on losing the data, I returned the external drive to my Vista laptop, and sent the 600 gb back across the LAN.

The receiver should be able to format any drive to standards it can recognize.
But, if it cannot format, maybe that will save some careless person from losing their data.

I'm not sympathetic to bug in a new receiver, but in the past I've said we should give a few months to get them ironed out.
In the mean time, some of the quirks and limitations may not be bugs.
Let's take time and get solutions to all the questions.

 

[Scott Greczkowski]

I formatted the 320 Gig WD My Book on the Manhattan and the results are shown below..

After that was done I took the drive off the Manhattan and plugged it into my Windows 7 machine and formatted it again as NTFS.

Plugged it back into the Manhattan again and IT COULDN'T SEE THE DRIVE.

So now I need to format it again as FAT32 and lose 32GB is space if I want to use it with the Manhattan. We know the drive works with the Manhattan since it see it when its formatted on FAT32. So again from where I sit the problem is with the Manhattan.

 

[brentb636]

Scott, I did the same earlier today with my WD 250 external drive. Same results as you. Perhaps tomorrow, I'll try a few different drives, since I have a variety, and see if there is a further pattern. Not a BIG thing, but it IS a thing.

 

[woofy]

I formatted the 320 Gig WD My Book on the Manhattan and the results are shown below..

After that was done I took the drive off the Manhattan and plugged it into my Windows 7 machine and formatted it again as NTFS.

Plugged it back into the Manhattan again and IT COULDN'T SEE THE DRIVE.

So now I need to format it again as FAT32 and lose 32GB is space if I want to use it with the Manhattan. We know the drive works with the Manhattan since it see it when its formatted on FAT32. So again from where I sit the problem is with the Manhattan.

Sorry Scott but that is not correct..This is the way hard drive manufacturers advertise volume sizes. If you take the time to do a little research on drives you will see what I mean. Nothing to do at all with the Manhattan.

One example for your interest.

No space has been "lost" here.
The difference in size is the same old "Marketing Size vs,
Binary size" problem:
1GB = 2^30 = 1073741824
320,000,000000/1073741824 = 298.032GB.

There are thousands of threads on Google on this!

 

[Scott Greczkowski]

Woofy you might be correct. But the fact is the Manhattan should recognize the drive. If it recognizes it in FAT32 mode it should recognize (or format it) in NTFS mode as well.

 

[Pixl]

Scott,

One possibility is that many external drives now have a bunch of junk on them when you buy them, no longer a bare drive ready for you to use. You might look at the drive with some partitioning software and remove any cute boot partitions that splash the drive name or other stuff. WD was the first that I found this on a usb drive.

 

[Scott Greczkowski]

Yup I did that already.

 

[stone1150]

Woofy you might be correct. But the fact is the Manhattan should recognize the drive. If it recognizes it in FAT32 mode it should recognize (or format it) in NTFS mode as well.

I noticed on your second picture that you had the Format sub menu open... Did you arrow up to the "fat" name above the ok and cancel buttons? If you would of done that, you can highlight the "fat" name and then change that to NTFS... Then say OK and the receiver will format in NTFS. That sub menu is a controll over a "fat" or a "ntfs" type of format.

 

[Scott Greczkowski]

Nope, when I go up to DISK MODE in format the only option it gives me is for FAT.

Believe me I am not crazy... well...

 

[brentb636]

Stone, I'm suspecting you're using the 7/11/2011 firmware that was later pulled. I don't have the option for NTFS, either, and the main code version of my box is May .

 

[stone1150]

We have a winner! I was beginning to question my own eyesight.. I am running the July update. I figured that little discrepency out this morning and sent a pm to Scott. No wonder there was misscommunication. We are looking at two different firmware versions... Maybe we should mention what fw version is being run when a question is asked.... My bad for not asking that right upfront as I never ran the May fw. Have a great day!

 

[brentb636]

Stone, I assume that the July update is a viable option, even though it was pulled. Can you think of any reason that I shouldn't load it ? I'm sure it's imperfect, or it wouldn't have been pulled, but if no feature "bricks" the box, I'd give it it a whirl.

 

[Scott Greczkowski]

No wonder why he was seeing things I wasn't (and vice versa)

I will email Stone for the file in a little bit. While I am not happy I will have to program in everything again (and hopefully its not like that for every firmware update.) but luckily all my motor positions are stored in the GBOX so I will not need to find all the signals again.

I would consider the May Firmware to be the only real firmware out there since the July update was pulled before anyone really got their units.

But with that said I am excited to try it and with its flaws I am starting to like the box and so is my wife. She can actually figure how to change channels on it, which is something she has not been able to do on any other box I have had before.

 

[brentb636]

Scott, I uploaded the file to the upload queue, some time ago, before it was pulled ( permission to distribute at that time from Jeff Schumann) . You might check and see if the file is up there. The properties indicate a 7/11/2011 date. [edit] The file is in the moderation queue.

 

[Scott Greczkowski]

Nope not seeing it, I see the channel editor and Default Satellite list but thats it.

 

[brentb636]

Check the default sat list. It's a 4M file, dated Jul 11 2011, and named "
product glass s3602 hdcp.abs" . I believe that's it, but I'll upload the version that I just loaded in mine.

 

[brentb636]

It's in the queue now ! Since the file was pulled , I'd be hesitant at this time to make it available for download, but I'd be happy to supply it to anyone who feels bold.

 

[Scott Greczkowski]

Thanks I will check it out tonight when I get home.