# HR24-200: replace INTERNAL hard drive & preserve programming



## paulo11 (Oct 2, 2015)

Hello--- I have a HR24-200 with the standard 500GB HDD for nearly three years, and it's nearly full of programming (~ 95% full). I need to replace the internal 500GB drive with a larger capacity drive (1.5 or 2 TB probably).... I also want to take the settings & programming from the existing drive and clone/copy/transfer that data onto the new drive. I've read many posts here & elsewhere on replacing the drive and a few on cloning the contents, and those posts have given me some confidence to try this..... MANY THANKS to those of you that have shared their experiences and successes! I've also read posts with the disclaimers regarding 'owned' vs 'leased' so I'm covered on that front. I'm also NOT necessarily interested in an EXTERNAL set-up.

Some of those posts, though are from 2011, 2010 or 2009 and some not necessarily were HR24-200 specific. So, I'm wondering if anyone can offer advice regarding:

What are the current preferred 1 - 2 TB hard drives for the HR24-200? 
Any drives I should stay away from or any HDD 'features' that have caused crashes or other problems?
What's the current preferred software to perform the data transfer/cloning?
Anything specific to the HR24-200 that I should pay attention to?

Some posts imply that I'll need to create a boot disk from the cloning software and go that route. Is that the current method of choice? I can disable my computer drives and hook-up the DVR drives to the PC if that's still a viable procedure.

Any other advice that leads to me successfully doing this will be greatly appreciated... Thanks.


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## carl6 (Nov 16, 2005)

It sounds like you have an owned unit, so we'll assume that disclaimer isn't an issue.

As to all of your questions, I don't think there is any new (or newer) information that what you've already found in several threads around here. I've never done this, so can't speak from first hand experience, but if you find and follow the procedures in the primary thread about doing this, you should be okay.

There is a 2TB limit on the HR2x series (the newer "Genie" products can go higher). I know of nothing that differentiates an HR24 from any other HR2x product as far as this procedure is concerned.


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## inkahauts (Nov 13, 2006)

Use the thread that discusses the procedure in detail. It shows copying the drive of an HR20 using a very very old version of gparted. That works great. But make sure you actually use the specific version of gparted that it says if you use a newer version you will have issues that need to be worked around. Just be careful how you type the commands and such and it's actually pretty easy. Do it when you don't need the DVR for a full day though. It can take a while to copy. 

It's most assuredly not a clone by the way. If you cloned instead of following the procedure to copy to a larger drive you won't get more space.


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## Rich (Feb 22, 2007)

paulo11 said:


> Hello--- I have a HR24-200 with the standard 500GB HDD for nearly three years, and it's nearly full of programming (~ 95% full). I need to replace the internal 500GB drive with a larger capacity drive (1.5 or 2 TB probably).... I also want to take the settings & programming from the existing drive and clone/copy/transfer that data onto the new drive. I've read many posts here & elsewhere on replacing the drive and a few on cloning the contents, and those posts have given me some confidence to try this..... MANY THANKS to those of you that have shared their experiences and successes! I've also read posts with the disclaimers regarding 'owned' vs 'leased' so I'm covered on that front. I'm also NOT necessarily interested in an EXTERNAL set-up.
> 
> Some of those posts, though are from 2011, 2010 or 2009 and some not necessarily were HR24-200 specific. So, I'm wondering if anyone can offer advice regarding:
> 
> ...


Wait until you get that open and see the HDD sled. How you're gonna fit a conventional 2TB drive on the sled is something to consider before you go to all the trouble of opening it. The sled is made for a slim Seagate Pipeline HDD and a conventional HDD will not fit in it. If you can find a slim 2TB Pipeline Seagate...well, I don't think they make one, but that's what you need. Or you can go the wire tie route if you can figure out how to do that. Aside from that, I can't think of any way to alter the sled without having a machine shop handy. I've got one 24-200 and I've got an external 2TB drive on it only because it was easier than trying to alter the sled or using wire ties to secure the HDD to the sled, which just didn't seem like the smartest thing to do.

Rich


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## paulo11 (Oct 2, 2015)

UPDATE 10/22/15:

Thanks to those that have read and/or offered some feedback so far.... I finally managed to carve out some time to disconnect & open the HR24-200.... Sure, I had to be careful, but opening the box was much easier than I was expecting.

The HDD _is mounted_ _upside down_ in a easy-to-disassemble bracket sled... Commenter #4 (Rich) nailed it-- The HDD is a ~3/4" thick Seagate Pipeline 500GB (firmware SC13) with a 1/4" piece of foam covering the top... Thanks to Rich-- I never would've noticed that & probably would've bought a full thickness WD drive. When I searched the Seagate website, I have only one choice if I want to stay with a thin drive, which is the Pipeline 1 TB. Also, Seagate looks to be re-badging the Pipeline series & is now calling it "3.5 Video".

There's an online "store" (that we're probably all familiar with) that offers this procedure as a service... except with a disclaimer regarding the HR24-200... and now I know why.... Pretty sure it's due to that thin drive and the limited options.

On the other hand--- there does look to be some clearance between the HDD and the circuit board, so I might try mounting an old 3.5 HDD that I have lying around just to check the clearances. The Power Supply ribbon will probably get pushed a little bit, but as long as I have positive clearance and breathing room for the fan, I might try it....... Otherwise, I'll order the 1TB Seagate & not look back.

Thanks again to you all on this website.


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## Rich (Feb 22, 2007)

paulo11 said:


> UPDATE 10/22/15:
> 
> Thanks to those that have read and/or offered some feedback so far.... I finally managed to carve out some time to disconnect & open the HR24-200.... Sure, I had to be careful, but opening the box was much easier than I was expecting.
> 
> ...


I know you want an internal drive and I agree with that, but the 24-200 I have does work really well with a TT dock and a 2TB WD EZRX on it. The only problem I'd have with the internal 1TB drive is that I like to keep my internal drives (and the external drive) at no more than 60% full.

Rich


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## paulo11 (Oct 2, 2015)

Rich said:


> I know you want an internal drive and I agree with that, but the 24-200 I have does work really well with a TT dock and a 2TB WD EZRX on it. The only problem I'd have with the internal 1TB drive is that I like to keep my internal drives (and the external drive) at no more than 60% full.
> 
> Rich


Yes-- the internal drive is what I originally intended to do... But the 1TB maximum option for the HR24-200 had me rethinking. The main objective for now is to preserve the existing programming.... If you have kids, you know what I mean.... But kids lose interest in DVR content rather quickly, so I should be able to purge 30-ish hours of programming within another year or so & free up even more space

Now regarding your external setup, is it possible for me to transfer my programming & settings onto a larger drive, and then use that drive Externally in a docking setup like yours? For some reason, I thought the HR24 treated the internal & external drives differently, and that simply swapping internal for external wasn't possible.

Otherwise the Seagate is rather inexpensive-- ~$45 from Amazon-- so the internal option (even if it's a temporary solution) won't be too expensive & should buy me a couple years of relief....

Today, I'll carve out some time and figure out what I need to do regarding the "gparted" software. Some posts claim 0.3.7.7 is the way to go & others say to use 0.4.6.1. Since I'm not asking for the gparted to do much, i'll start with the 3.7.7. I immediately see two download options-- a ".iso" file and a ".zip"...... Ugh-- as comfortable as I am with the 'mechanics' and 'hardware' of this process, it's the software process that always baffles/frustrates/scares me... At the end of the day, I'm just looking for a boot disk, but getting from point A-to-B is going to be circuitous.

BTW... the full thickness 3.5" drive is really snug in the HR24-200... and I didn't think it was worth the risk with potential issues; especially for what I need to accomplish.

And thanks again for your input. Every piece of advice or experience teaches me something, and I appreciate it.


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## Rich (Feb 22, 2007)

paulo11 said:


> Yes-- the internal drive is what I originally intended to do... But the 1TB maximum option for the HR24-200 had me rethinking. The main objective for now is to preserve the existing programming.... If you have kids, you know what I mean.... But kids lose interest in DVR content rather quickly, so I should be able to purge 30-ish hours of programming within another year or so & free up even more space
> 
> Now regarding your external setup, is it possible for me to transfer my programming & settings onto a larger drive, and then use that drive Externally in a docking setup like yours? For some reason, I thought the HR24 treated the internal & external drives differently, and that simply swapping internal for external wasn't possible.
> 
> ...


You might be able to copy the HDD, but I'm not sure. I back everything up multiple times (I really distrust the HRs, something I'll probably never get over) so the issue never came up for me.

Rich


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## inkahauts (Nov 13, 2006)

With all the on demand stuff and endless reruns of kids shows I can't see letting some kids programming keep me from upgrading a hard drive. There's always more stuff on daily...

And you can get up to 2tb not 1tb on the HR24. 

You can copy programs from a smaller drive to a bigger one there is a thread on how to do it on this forum. Just follow the original directions exactly including which gparted version to use. But it can't be moved to a new DVR. Must be the same DVR.


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## paulo11 (Oct 2, 2015)

** UPDATE ** I finally had some time to _try_ to create a "boot disk" of gparted. Some posts recommend version 0.3.7.7, so that's what I went with. I downloaded their .iso file and tried to put it on a USB. I have a fairly new Dell 8700 with windows 8, so I changed the boot sequence to try to boot to USB... Wasn't sure if I was supposed to run it through an unzip program or not....

Long & short was that I didn't get it to boot. I also tried a USB .iso file prep tool called YUMI. That didn't seem to help either. As I said, software & programming isn't my thing, but I'll figure it out. Did I mention that I'm of the baby boom generation? Not an excuse, but when you're a baby boomer, you don't exactly stock up on green bananas if you get my drift. I also have an older Windows 7 machine, so I may try it there instead.

So when some of these threads say to "create a gparted boot disk", I know there's more to it than that..... Or maybe I'm just making a bigger deal out of it than it is, but I'll get there... eventually.


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## paulo11 (Oct 2, 2015)

** UPDATE ** Successfully initialized the new drive... and ran gparted 0.4.6-1..... It ran for a little over 2 hours and although "successful", I received thousands of the "xfsrestore: attempt to write xxxxx bytes to viewer/segments/..... at offset yyyyyy failed: Invalid argument" errors... A review of some of the legacy recordings on the new drive showed plenty of picture skips, pixelations and general annoyances....

One thread recommended that I "reformat the new drive" and then do a "token recording" on it for a few minutes and then try the file transfer again... Another suggestion was to wait until the last possible second when doing the graceful shutdown to make absolutely sure the HDD is properly prepared. I may have to do that for both drives...

I'll try a fresh recording later to validate the drive itself, but I expect the new recordings to be just fine.

As is currently, I went from 4% free to 58% free.....


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## P Smith (Jul 25, 2002)

You did not use recommend version gparted, so you're on your own. And just follow these good advice without reposting. Just use.


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## inkahauts (Nov 13, 2006)

Yeah you have to use the specific version in the first posts of the thread or you may not succeed. That version may still show some errors but it will work.


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## paulo11 (Oct 2, 2015)

inkahauts said:


> Yeah you have to use the specific version in the first posts of the thread or you may not succeed. That version may still show some errors but it will work.





P Smith said:


> You did not use recommend version gparted, so you're on your own. And just follow these good advice without reposting. Just use.


OK thanks-- The 'first post' I believe refers to gparted 0.3.7.7 or later... If you're implying that I will see fewer errors with 0.3.7.7, then I can do that. DO you have any suggestions as to whether I should "reset" the new drive with the HR24 'reset everything' option, or just overwrite the drive (as is) with gparted 0.3.7.7 or reformat the new drive with my PC and then re-initalize on the DVR...? Thanks.


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## P Smith (Jul 25, 2002)

no need to post same q twice in different threads - you got an answer overthere


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## paulo11 (Oct 2, 2015)

P Smith said:


> no need to post same q twice in different threads - you got an answer overthere


OK-- great. Thank you.


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## paulo11 (Oct 2, 2015)

*** UPDATE & SUMMARY *** In post #10, I had difficulty getting gparted to boot-up and In post #11, I had an unsuccessful file transfer using gparted 0.4.6-1 on 10/30/15.... Since then, I traced the boot-up problem to the USB drive I was using. I tried a different USB drive and gparted booted-up just fine.... except version 0.3.7-7. That version took about 10 minutes evaluating my PC system -- trying to "set the clock" and "create a network", etc.... but in the end, it _would _finally launch. For me however, 0.3.7-7 COULD NOT find my two DVR drives connected to my PC, although they were both connected directly with SATA cables. I also tried file transfer again with 0.4.6-1, 0.4.1-2 and the latest: 0.23.0-1. 0.4.6-1 & 0.4.1-2 booted up very fast and were both were able to find my DVR drives, but partitions 1 & 3 on those drives were labeled as "UNKNOWN" _file system type _(partition 2 was correctly identified) .... I was originally thinking that the _unknown file system typ_e was causing the skips, freezes, pixelations, etc in my legacy recordings....??

When I tried 0.23.0-1, that booted up just fine, found my drives just fine and correctly identified partitions 1 & 2... but partition 3 was still listed as "unknown". This version of g-parted also included a small 4th partition, called "unallocated" with ~2MB of space. I used the recommended command input on page 1 of this thread: http://www.dbstalk.com/topic/158213-removing-replacing-copying-hard-drive-of-hr2-receiver-photo-tutorial/ .... except (I think) when using 0.23.0-1, the default puts you in a root directory that's not "editable" (permission denied!). So I started off with a "sudo" command to get me to the home directory where gparted would then accept the prescribed commands.

The filedump proceeded without incident ( zero errors!! ) and probably took 2 to 2-1/2 hours. I had to type "exit" twice at the very end. The second time (I'm guessing) was to undo the sudo portion of my command input.

The new drive, legacy recordings & existing "settings" all appear to be fine. The DTV TV schedule was a little wonky, but they have a nightly refresh to update all of that, & today it's fine. I went from ~5% free space on the HDD to 58% free. Apparently the "unknown file system" for partition 3 was not a deal breaker after all.

I want to thank everyone that added constructive input to these threads... & gave me the confidence to try this in the first place. As comfortable as I am with computer hardware, the software & programming isn't my thing. SOme of these threads offered excellent procedures & photos that made it all possible.


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## fhturner (Sep 27, 2015)

Just to add my experience for those who might wind up here at this thread in a future search... I was attempting to move to my 3rd drive, since the 1TB replacement for the original 500GB was failing. So, I bought a 2TB Seagate Video 3.5 drive, but when running the clone operation, I kept encountering massive amounts of this same error as Paulo when using Gparted 0.4.6-1:



paulo11 said:


> xfsrestore: attempt to write xxxxx bytes to viewer/segments/..... at offset yyyyyy failed: Invalid argument" errors


When reinstalling the new drive into the HR24, it sputtered and skipped over all of the recordings. I was afraid to try any other versions, because I had read about later Gparted releases failing to do the clone/restore properly. So I kept testing and trying, and I noticed that I was able to clone from the 1TB to another 1TB w/o all of the errors. Then, I tried a different 2TB- failure. So I tried a 1.5TB eSATA RAID0 I had for another comparison point. That worked. It became apparent to me that Gparted 0.4.6-1 simply could not handle 2TB+ drives. So, I downloaded the latest stable release, 0.27.0-1, tried that, and *voila*, no more errors. The clone went perfectly (except the bad blocks on the source, of course), and I'm now running fine w/ 2TB.

For reference, my cloning station was a Mac Pro 2009 tower, which the Gparted Live CD boots up just fine. Another thing to consider, which I did, is to first make a block-level copy of the failing drive onto an intermediate using the Unix/Linux command "dd". This made my repeated attempts to clone much faster and didn't put add'l strain on the already-failing drive. I believe the Mac Terminal command I used for that was something like:

dd bs=32768 if=/dev/rdiskX of=/dev/rdiskY conv=noerror,sync​
where X is the disk # of the source and Y the # of the destination.

Hope this helps,
Fred


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## P Smith (Jul 25, 2002)

nope, it is not helpful at all as your promoting "dd" for copy drives with different size
it's simply non-working method, please read original thread about copy DTV dives


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