Not an IceTV problem but....

Started by gadgetchick, March 05, 2009, 01:06:09 PM

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gadgetchick

I cant get any sense from Topfield phone support and cant find their forum specifically for  the 7100....

Anyway, my toppy wont recognize *any* usb stick or external drive.  I'm trying to use a 320gb WD passport drive to copy shows onto for backup. Its formatted FAT32 single partition. I also have a 4gb usb stick which is also FAT32 but obviously not big enough for backup but also cannot be seen by toppy in either front or rear usb.

message is 'cant connect external storage'  or  'can not find usb media' dependingon whether I am trying to copy to or format the drive,

I am on the latest firmware - did this by FTPing the update to root and booting....

Here's the thing...  The usb wireless dongle works fine - I have setup a wireless network.

Has anyone seen this problem? Got any suggestions?

Vortical

Have you tried this

Extract below from iTopfield Hints & Tips, Troubleshooting HDD... Thread http://forum.itopfield.com.au/Topic101-63-1.aspx

Quote
USB Memory stick not recognised
Make sure it is formatted as FAT or FAT32.
If it is still not recognised Windows users can try reformatting the stick using the HP USB Disk Storage Format tool.
http://files.extremeoverclocking.com/file.php?f=197

btw the link to the forums is broken from the main website but you should still be able to access the forums by putting Default.aspx at the end of the link
http://forum.itopfield.com.au/Default.aspx

prl

The topfield forum is at http://forum.itopfield.com.au/Default.aspx It has two 7100 forum areas, TF7100HDPVRt General and TF7100HDPVRt and connectivity.

Like the Beyonwiz, the Topfield has limited capability to power external drives that don't have a separate power supply. This may be the contributing to the problem for your Passport drive, though there shouldn't be a problem with the USB stick. Because the Topfield stores its recording data in a single large file, you may have problems copying large recordings to a FAT32-formatted drive (FAT32 has a maximum file size of 4GB and recordings are frequently bigger than that).

If you format the HDD (once you can get it recognised) on the Topfield, it will format the drive in Linux ext2 format, which allows for much larger file sizes. However, you need additional software (free) to run on a PC for it to recognise ext2 file systems.

There are more details in the Topfield Using an external Hard Drive FAQ (some of which I wrote, but I haven't used a Topfield for some time now, and I'm no longer really up to date).
Peter
Beyonwiz T4 in-use
Beyonwiz T2, T3, T4, U4 & V2 for testing

gadgetchick

Thanks guys,

The HP USB Disk Storage Format tool has resolved the problem with the 4gb USB stick but hasn't helped the Passport drive.

I'll take a look at the links suggested, I knew there was a 7100 forum area, just couldn't find it.  if I don't find anything I'll post a new topic. 

Maybe I can format it directly under linux at work tomorrow....  nothing harm trying.

Cheers
Vicki

prl

Hi gadgetchick, glad that at least part of the problem is solved.

If the problem is caused by the TF7100 not being able to power the WD Passport drive, you may be able to solve the problem by taking the USB through a powered USB hub. This can certainly help with the same problem on Beyonwiz.

Probably the best thing to do is to ask on the Topfield forum, because as I said, I'm out of touch with the details fo the Topfield PVRs now.
Peter
Beyonwiz T4 in-use
Beyonwiz T2, T3, T4, U4 & V2 for testing

Vortical

#5
Quote from: gadgetchick on March 05, 2009, 07:55:31 PM
Thanks guys,

The HP USB Disk Storage Format tool has resolved the problem with the 4gb USB stick but hasn't helped the Passport drive.

I'll take a look at the links suggested, I knew there was a 7100 forum area, just couldn't find it.  if I don't find anything I'll post a new topic. 

Maybe I can format it directly under linux at work tomorrow....  nothing harm trying.

Cheers
Vicki

With the Passport drive it needs to have the partition volume deleted through HDD Management in Windows then create a new small 32gb(or smaller) FAT/FAT32 partition.
The PVR should then recognise the external hdd but it needs to be formated twice with the pvr, once to format the 32gb(or smaller) partition then a second time to overwrite the whole drive for use wit the pvr.

To be honest if you have ftp up and running on the 7100 it's a lot of hassle using an external hdd, it's much easier keeping the drive as ntfs and ftping to the pc then transferring to the hdd (but don't do transfers while the pvr is recording, some people have had issues with their recordings while doing network transfers)

There is a lot of details on how to do this in the threads Peter linked to.

I did a full walkthrough for someone on dtv forums but I'll have to dig it up and edit this post with the link.

edit: link provided
Read from this post by myself (Post #679) onwards trhough to about post #700 on the next page

http://www.dtvforum.info/index.php?showtopic=68288&view=findpost&p=1179445