Thumb drive -> HDD

[Roland Perry]

Another gadget/converter question:

I have a couple of AV devices (PVR, TV) which have added functionality if one plugs in a "USB HDD".

But neither recognises a perfectly ordinary thumb drive as a virtual HDD (which of course any PC would).

Not sure if this is a lack of drivers, or are they suspicious that a thumb drive won't have sufficient capacity [easy to find them with 128GB nowadays].

The PVR (with its DVD player hat on) will *play* content on a thumb drive but I'd like to use a thumb drive to transfer recordings.

Similarly, the TV uses the storage to implement pause/rewind (as well as as a PVR record facility[1]), but won't let me use the obvious media which is a thumb drive.

[1] Which I'm probably happy to only replay on that TV rather than spool it off for posterity.

[Andy Burns]

Maybe it only recognises devices with filesystems in partitions, not a filesystem on the entire device? You could try with a partition on the USB flash drive ... may need to use a custom formatting tool, or linux

[GB]

I'd try alternative formats on the thumb drive. My thumb drives seem to be Fat 32. Try ExFat or NTFS.

Also, and I know this is an appalling suggestion, it is possible that the TV and PVR come with a manual.

[Roland Perry]

In message [e-mail]>, at 17:30:49 on Mon, 2 Aug

2021, Andy Burns [e-mail] remarked:

I've got a hairy-chested utility that does partitioning (and resizes/joins/splits them, which always strikes me as tempting fate), so I'll try that. Thanks.

[Roland Perry]

a) I don't think they did (it's all online nowadays).

b) It wouldn't go into this level of detail.

[Theo]

When I tried this with a Sony TV recently, I tried to work out if it was:

1. detecting the difference between a flash drive and a HDD (how I can't imagine, but say an SD card in a reader might show up as the wrong sort of mass storage device, especially if it's a multi-slot reader)
2. complaining the size was less than some minimum size
3. complaining about the partitioning on the drive
4. complaining about the formatting of the drive

It did moan about #2 (16GB is too small). On the 64GB SD card in a USB reader I gave it a single MBR partition FAT formatted, not recognised. I expected to resolve #4 and maybe #3 by reformatting it with the TV, but the TV wouldn't detect it enough to allow me to format it. I gave up.

My guess is that it probably depends on what OS the TV runs. If it's Linux underneath that is fairly forgiving of what kind of devices it'll accept as Mass Storage. But if it's some custom OS that doesn't use a Linux kernel it has less support for handling various device quirks, and maybe it only works with a certain subset of devices. It could also be that if there's a hub between the drive and the TV it doesn't work, but it does direct.

It may also be that it detects the device fine internally but doesn't acknowledge that unless it passes some opaque check, like coming from a whitelist of manufacturers or something. That would be weird, but I could imagine say a Samsung TV only supporting Samsung drives.

Theo

[Jeff Layman]

My Panasonic PVR /specifically/ states that a USB HDD drive of less than 160GB capacity cannot be used. The Panasonic TV states that it can record using a USB HDD of 160GB to 6TB in size. It also states under the heading "Media Player": "Media Player allows you to enjoy photo, video or music recorded on the USB Flash Memory, and content recorded with this TV to the formatted USB HDD". So I assume it can't record on a USB memory stick.

I've never tried it, but the PVR will only work with a USB HDD which has been registered to it. I assume, though haven't checked, that the recording on the USB HDD will be encrypted, and can only be decrypted by the PVR it is registered to. It is not possible to transfer recordings to any other device. It won't allow /any/ HD programme to be recorded on an external USB HDD. I assume that is because of HDCP encryption.

[Andrew]

My Humax HD-FOX-T2 (single tuner, diskless STB) will not accept a USB thumb drive, but is quite happy with a 2.5 500G bus-powered USB HDD. It is a Linux device. Some people have changed to a bespoke Linux OS that bypasses some of the copy restrictions but I don't know how to get that onto the single-tuner diskless model.

[Robin]

How do you know if you haven't looked?

And it might just possible help others to help you if you gave the make and model of the TV and PVR. They don't all behave the same.

[Martin Brown]

Some TV's require that you format the USB stick with their own format which isn't quite anything (though nearer a Linux than PC format). They are also rather tetchy about which USB sticks they will accept both size and speed wise. Very few of my USB sticks get on with my Panasonic TV. (dates from the days when they still *made* TVs rather than badging)

And I have a range available up to 256Gb. Some are probably too slow others too fast or too big. There was a table somewhere of what was acceptable to it but I found several drives that were within those bounds that it would refuse point blank to work with. I forget the error when you tried to record something to it now. My strategy was find the biggest one that worked and then leave it in situ until it fails!

[Roland Perry]

In message <Rfv* [e-mail]>, at 18:18:03 on Mon,

2 Aug 2021, Theo <theom+ [e-mail]> remarked:

Currently the HDD USB drives I use for both are not in any sense brothers or sisters of the appliances themselves.

[Roland Perry]

In message [e-mail], at

19:03:31 >> In message <se97hc$psv$ [e-mail], at 17:46:37 on Mon, 2 Aug

All either of them have is a "Quick Start" guide. Basically, where to plug in the mains, and how the more basic functions of the remote control work.

TV is LG about a year old, PVR is Panasonic about six years old.

[Roland Perry]

That's interesting, the USB HDD I've used is 500GB, but I also have a

60GB one. I'll try that tomorrow and see what happens.

Both are recycled drives from defunct laptops, in a USB-drive enclosure.

The PVR has various stuff which sulks [from refusing, to only copying in real time, not 'fast'] when programme material you want to transfer to the external drive is considered "protected". But the stuff I'm transferring at the moment is from really old VHS tapes (recorded on the PVR through its SCART input) which don't trigger that.

Not had anything like that.

There are some (many?) off-air programmes recorded by the PVR which can probably be backed up to a USB device and then only restored to the same PVR. But I'm not trying to transfer those. In any event I'd expect that everything else being equal it shouldn't matter if the USB device in question is a rotating drive or a solid state thumb drive. But then there's the size thing.

[Roland Perry]

In message <se9e3p$ci7$ [e-mail]>, at 19:38:48 on Mon, 2 Aug

2021, Mart>> In message <se97hc$psv$ [e-mail], at 17:46:37 on Mon, 2 Aug

I'm coming to the conclusion that for now I should ignore the TV (as it's working fine with what it has) and concentrate on the PVR (which is the immediate requirement).

[David]

I think that a USB stick presents differently to a USB HDD over the USB interface.

At least, you can't just boot from a USB stick like you can from a USB drive. You have to do some fancy footwork first.

It has been a while since I looked at it, though.

Cheers

Dave R

[Robin]

That may well be all they come with on paper but I've not met a modern TV that has nothing more - for reading on screen or for download.

Why so coy?

And counterproductive when the model number is what's needed to see if there is a user manual. Like e.g. the 80 page manual for a Panasonic PVR of that vintage I have here (to help support a distant user); and which lists different functionalities for a USB HDD from those for USB memory.

[Bob Eager]

Also, experiment with both MBR and GPT forms of 'partition table'.

[Martin Brown]

He's right. We need the model numbers and build dates to make progress.

6 years ago was almost exactly when Panasonic started badging stuff made in Hungary? so you had "Panasonic" TV's that would *not* respond to real Panasonic remotes (or generic ones set to Panasonic) only to "Vestel".

I don't know what else they outsourced/badged around that time.

[newshound]

My Samsung TV automatically runs some sort of test on a "new" thumb drive and, IIRC, rejects ones that are "Not fast enough" to save video.

[John Rumm]

2.5" SSD in a USB enclosure will normally work ok... I did have a HDD on the TV in our bedroom, but found it annoying that it was somewhat noisy

- especially when the TV decides to perk up at some unearthly hour of the morning to check for updates. So I swapped the HDD for a SSD in the same enclosure and it was then silent, but still worked ok.

When I looked into this a while back, I came to the conclusion that most PVRs and TVs have to implement encryption on recordings in order to be able to license the various bits of software required to make the things work.

So I gave up with that approach and used a network TV tuner and plex to implement a proper network shared PVR that can record by itself and playback anywhere on any number of devices.

Speed can be an issue - not all thumb drives can sustain a fast enough write rate for an extended period.

(true of some cheaper SSDs as well)