Hi. I recently removed 30+working 2.5" 500GB HDD from some sagem TV recorder boxes for use on PC's. I have tried to format them through Windows but every drive gives the same error "cyclic redundancy check". I have done this many times before from various manufacturers with no problems. The drives are Hitachi and I downloaded their diagnostic software which did not help. I have tried Easus, Minitool and Acronis partition managers which also failed. The PC sees the disc but needs to initialize it, but fails to do so and I cannot format or assign a letter to any drive. I find it hard to believe that all the drives are faulty as each of the drives works in the PVR DVR recorder. Any help would be gratefully accepted .
Use HDD From PVR DVR in PC
- Thread starter smartinks
- Start date
Boogieman_WD
Judicious
- Jul 31, 2014
- 6,050
- 2
- 35,960
Hey there smartinks. Did you try if you can perform chkdsk on the drives with the CRC errors, to see if you're able to format them afterwards? You could also try downloading an HDD diagnostic tool which supports low level format (Write Zeros) to see if you're able to format the this way. Note that after writing zeros, you would have to initialize, partition and format the HDDs again as if they were new drives.
Hope that helps.
Boogieman_WD
Hope that helps.
Boogieman_WD
Hi Boogieman. I tried the WD diagnostic tool data lifeguard. That failed all 4 tests including writing zeros on every drive. If I could just get it to bypass the cyclic redundancy check error I could initialize and format them all. I have tried the diagnostic tools on every drive with zero success. It still reports the cyclic redundancy error as soon as I attempt to initialize it. Is there any way to bypass the error?
Boogieman_WD
Judicious
- Jul 31, 2014
- 6,050
- 2
- 35,960
It's pretty unfortunate, but it sounds like the drives have failed if they can't pass any of the tests. You could still try chkdsk command though to see if you have any luck:
1. Open up CMD (start menu button, type-in cmd and press "enter")
2. type in chkdsk /r /f x: (where X is the letter of the drive you wish to check)
3. wait for the process to finish and try if you have any luck reformatting them after that.
Good luck!
smartinks, there would be no point contacting Hitachi/WD tech support. WD's staff get their technical information from the same place that you and I do, namely the Internet.
Instead you would be best advised to read the articles at forums such as HDD Oracle and HDD Guru. I believe a user named "locarno" was trying to unlock a bunch of Hitachi PVRs that were tied to another brand of PVR (Nagra Vision). I can't recall whether he managed to repurpose his Hitachi drives, but I do know that he was able to unlock and re-use his WD drives. He required special software (WDMarvel), so persevering with ordinary software tools would be pointless. There is a good reason why 30+ drives all exhibit the same problem. It's called "DRM" or content protection.
You didn't answer my question as to whether your drives spin up. PVR drives often power up in standby mode. They only spin up when they receive an appropriate command. If PUIS is your problem, then a tool such as HDAT2 can disable it. Alternatively, you can boot from a Ubuntu Live CD and Linux should then automatically spin up your drive. I have seen this PUIS issue many times at places such as HDD Guru.
If you are adventurous, there is one trick that you could try. Prepare a hotswap SATA port on your computer's motherboard. Power up and access your drive in your Sagem PVR. Hopefully this will mean that it is now in the unlocked state. Now disconnect the SATA data cable but not the SATA power cable. Then quickly attach the drive to your computer's SATA port using a longer cable if necessary. Hopefully your computer will now see an unlocked drive.
Instead you would be best advised to read the articles at forums such as HDD Oracle and HDD Guru. I believe a user named "locarno" was trying to unlock a bunch of Hitachi PVRs that were tied to another brand of PVR (Nagra Vision). I can't recall whether he managed to repurpose his Hitachi drives, but I do know that he was able to unlock and re-use his WD drives. He required special software (WDMarvel), so persevering with ordinary software tools would be pointless. There is a good reason why 30+ drives all exhibit the same problem. It's called "DRM" or content protection.
You didn't answer my question as to whether your drives spin up. PVR drives often power up in standby mode. They only spin up when they receive an appropriate command. If PUIS is your problem, then a tool such as HDAT2 can disable it. Alternatively, you can boot from a Ubuntu Live CD and Linux should then automatically spin up your drive. I have seen this PUIS issue many times at places such as HDD Guru.
If you are adventurous, there is one trick that you could try. Prepare a hotswap SATA port on your computer's motherboard. Power up and access your drive in your Sagem PVR. Hopefully this will mean that it is now in the unlocked state. Now disconnect the SATA data cable but not the SATA power cable. Then quickly attach the drive to your computer's SATA port using a longer cable if necessary. Hopefully your computer will now see an unlocked drive.
Hi' Apparently the drives were specifcally designed for the AV market only and not for use in a PC. To increase speed on the disks error checking is bypassed in the PVR, but not in a PC where data could be lost. Hitachi said very few people wouldn't notice a pixel missing in a PVR recording but a single error on a PC disk would cause software to crash.
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