Separate External HD Parition

[ryotgz]

Just got a 1 TB external hard drive and don't really need to dedicate the whole size to the DVR. Is it possible to partition the drive where I can have two partitions - 500 MB & 500 MB. Then have one linux partition be for the DVR and one NTFS to be used for Windows storage. I tried partitioning it into two different drives, but the DVR saw it as one big drive and formatted the whole thing.

Any one try this or know if it is possible?

 

[garys]

You cannot change Dish's software, you can partition the drive but whenever you connect it the the Dish receiver, it will reformat the entire drive.

 

[Smith P.]

Try to resize last partition after DVR formatting. Then check in DVR, if it will accept the mod then create your new partition.

 

[ryotgz]

Try to resize last partition after DVR formatting. Thencheck in DVR, if it will accept the mod then create your new partition.

Ah! Great idea P Smith.

Garys,

I know we cannot change the Dish software, but with some genius thinking like P Smith it may work.

 

[ryotgz]

Smith, P. - You are the best!

I booted GParted and resized the 3rd partition down about 200 GB to test. I then formatted the 200 GB partition to NTFS and copied files to it. After setting everything up, I plugged it back into the DVR and it shows that I have 730 GB of total space instead of the original 930 GB. I was able to copy a show to the drive and watch it on my other DVR.

Now I just need to resize the partitions so I have 500 GB for the DVR & 500 GB for Windows storage. Then I will have accomplished what I was hoping for.

So the key is, let the DVR format the whole drive. Then boot into GParted (or possibly another Linux build) and resize the partitions as desired.

 

[Smith P.]

Don't listen to naysayers ! :up

 

[Jim5506]

This sounds interesting.

What other DVR do you have?

Are you saying that you copied files from the linux partition to the Windows partition and then watched them on another DVR, or did you copy files from the other DVR to the windows partition and are able to use the EHD on two different types of DVR's?

 

[Pepper]

no, he's wanting to use half for DVR, and half for windows storage.

 

[ryotgz]

Pepper is correct. I just bought a 1 TB EHD and didn't want to dedicate the whole thing to just my DVRs (722 & 612). So I was able to get the DVR to format the drive, then size down the partitions to give me room to store personal files on.

So I have 500 GB for my DVRs and 500 GB for other stuff (pictures, videos, etc.).

 

[Jim5506]

Great, so when the drive fails you lose videos AND data.

 

[Smith P.]

'Half empty'

 

[ryotgz]

Great, so when the drive fails you lose videos AND data.

You can say the same for anything you have on any hard drive. Its the chance you take with mechanical drives. Plus I don't use it for backup, mostly for transferring large data and movies back and forth. If you are worried about a drive failing, buy a SSD.

 

[Jim5506]

I go with more, smaller drives.

 

[bookworm370]

Another option, if you're worried about losing it is to Ghost it or Linux DD is to another 1TB drive every so often. Considering the transfer times you might want to consider a removable USB-SATA drive. You can then either hot dock one or both of them to your computer and transfer at the much higher Sata speeds.

If the drives are the same size you can use DD to just block copy them or you can also use Linux to copy each partition over to another area by mounting finding the partition ID (ie /dev/usba) or /mnt/partid.

The 2nd way give you the ability to have multiple partitions and just copy off the Dish part and use your normal backup programs to backup your PC data partitions.

Either way, to make a backup of the you can Ghost or DD it. I also believe (though I haven't tried it) that you can CP it over with the right parameters once you've done it once with DD as DD set all the proper partition parameters when it block copied it the first time. After that you can CP the files over keeping the permissions in place. You just have to use a version of Linux (like Unbuntu 10) that supports the ext3 file system.

 

[Smith P.]

Awkward proposal - if you read the site, then you should knew - copy sub folders(ie recordings) from DishArc folder is enough to make most efficient backup/restore of EHD user data.

 

[TheKrell]

Awkward proposal - if you read the site, then you should knew - copy sub folders(ie recordings) from DishArc folder is enough to make most efficient backup/restore of EHD user data.

Indeed a dd will copy every last block, empty or not. It has the benefit of transparency, so we know it will work. If you dd sda to sdb (for example) rather than just sda1 (a partition), then you'll get the whole darn disk, partitions and all. But it will be slow.

So, will the "DishArc folder" copy method retain the program info data?

 

[Smith P.]

Tested, it works and a report is on the site. Enjoy.