Replacing Hard Drive

[bjast]

Hello

I have recently begun using the SiliconDust HDHomeRun Flex Quatro 4 x ATSC Tuners - HDFX-4US

But now I find I need to replace the original hard drive I installed with a larger hard drive.

How do I go about replacing my original hard drive with a newer one?

I realize I will likely lose my previous recordings.

Thanks for your assistance with this.

Bill J.

[jasonl]

Unplug the power, unplug the drive, plug in the new drive, plug in the power. If the new drive is blank, it will automatically be formatted for use. If not, you'll have a button to format it on the HDHomeRun's web page at http://hdhomerun.local/ .

Transferring recordings can be done, but it requires access to a Linux system (can be WSL, a VM, or a live image).

[bjast]

Hello Jason. Thanks for the helpful information.

Sorry I neglected to reply right after you posted this.

Bill J.

[zamboknee]

So I'm currently a "T***" user. I have an intellectually disabled kid who loves her specific shows. My hard drive is kind of failing on us and the process to move it's contents to a new hard drive is, if not impossible, cumbersome to say the least.

I'm posting here because I'd like to know if there's any kind of process , in regards to the HD HomeRun system, or (mac friendly app) that can fairly easily allow you to transfer shows from the old hard drive connected to the HD HomeRun to a new hard drive on the HD HomeRun.

I'm considering ditching 'T' for 'HD' and this would go a long way towards that.

Thanks

[zamboknee]

Transferring recordings can be done, but it requires access to a Linux system (can be WSL, a VM, or a live image).

Is there a more in-depth post or article on doing this? I have a mac and am interested in how to transfer recordings.

[signcarver]

The reason why you need a linux system is that the filesystem for scribe/servio/flex is xfs and even there I have had to make sure it had xfs fully supported as some distros don't handle it correctly without some components installed. The first time I did it was to move stuff off the drive and it moved and "deleted" but then when reattached, the space wasn't available so put it back on the vm and installed xfs tools to let me recover the space from the deleted files (think of it going to a recycle bin that never showed up to empty). Typically for a mac or windows you might easily find a driver that can read from xfs but not write properly. If using a vm, I would make sure the vm has full control of the device (drive).

I would strongly suggest that any drive intended to be used in (attached to) the servio/scribe/flex be inserted there first and let it format and put the proper HDHomeRun folder on the system where the recordings need to go (typically no problem with files/folders added under that as it typically stores each recording in its series folder). Then move it to the vm for access. Depending on how you set up the vm, it can be as easy as drag from host to dive on vm... but you may need to make some shares and transfer as if on a network drive. These days rather than a vm, I attach the drive to the usb port on a NAS (typically a NAS runs on linux) and it automatically makes an accessible network share to copy/move things in either direction but not all NAS's behave that way and some don't natively support xfs but such support might be able to be added.

[jasonl]

Is there a more in-depth post or article on doing this? I have a mac and am interested in how to transfer recordings.

No, because most of the process would be out of scope. As a general outline:

1. Install a program that lets you run virtual machines on the Mac, either Parallels ($) or VMWare Fusion (free for personal use version exists and I think it would work, also paid version available), or if you are on an Intel Mac, you can also use VirtualBox (free)
2. Install the appropriate version of a Linux distro of your choice (x86-64 for Intel Macs, ARM64 for Apple Silicon Macs).
3. Install the guest additions for your VM software in the VM
4. Make sure your new drive has been formatted by the HDHomeRun
5. Connect both drives to the computer. If macOS offers to initialize the drives, don't do it. Set the VM software to pass them through to the VM.
6. Use whatever files browser tool is present on your Linux distro to copy the recordings from /media on the old drive to /media on the new drive
7. Shut down the VM, disconnect the drives, and connect the new one to the HDHomeRun.

It's a lot easier on a PC because you can boot to a live image on a flash drive and not have to install anything, which isn't possible on Apple Silicon Macs and requires changing a setting in recovery mode to boot to external devices on the newer Intel Macs.