Oddity Archive: Episode 278.3 - Magnavox H2160MW9 Personal DVR/DVD Recorder UPDATE (A Failure)
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- Опубліковано 27 бер 2024
- Trying to bulk dump the contents of the DVR. Here’s how NOT* to do it…
*No Hard Drives were harmed in the making of this episode. It was reinstalled and all material is still 100% intact.
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UPDATE: I'm gonna pull the HD again and send it off to a viewer with a Linux rig. We'll see how that goes.
I'd read up on the dozen or so commonly used Linux filesystems to decide which distro to use or RPMs to install. Basically, ask a Linux forum before trying that. Reading up, it looks like a raw disk, or at least absolutely minimal filesystem. Some people have had luck with a hex editor to read the sectors, but that's more involved than I would try.
You could set up a usb drive with a live, runnable version of Linux, boot your laptop from that, and see if the drive reads plugged into that. No changes will be made to the existing system unless you deliberately do so.
@@ThisIsAdamB Even then, Ben could still set up a dual-boot if worse came to worse. GRUB does support Windows after all.
If you haven't already reached out to someone who is fluent in Linux and their filesystems, I wouldn't mind taking a look. I'm an avid Linux user and do quite a lot of work with it.
@@Code7Unltd True, but I always recommend a live disk session for anyone new to Linux, just to get comfortable. And here Ben just needs a tool for a specific task, not a whole project of altering his current setup. Either would work, but live disk is faster to get started with.
That device uses is a costume proprietary disk format on the HDD that is custom to that model of machine. Which means you can't hook it up to any windows or mac computer. On Linux you probably can but it won't be easy unless the Linux version has the support out of the box for the proprietary format on HDD. On Windows if doesn't show up under my computer or this PC you will need to go to disk management. Just right click on this PC or my computer and click manage from there you should be able to find disk management which will show all drivers connected even if windows doesn't support the format.
I'm wondering if you went into Windows Partition Manager if it showed as an unknown drive. Thinking the partition might not be recognized by Windows.
There may not be a partition. That's the point. Raw disk is just reading from sectors, nothing more.
If it's using a Linux based file system on the drive, then the most common of the time this machine was released would have been either EXT2, or EXT3 so it should not be too hard to read the disk, although the latest Linux kernel releases are dropping direct EXT2 file system support, but I think something like GNOME Disk should at least still be able to mount the drive, and have a distro read it.
I knew right away the HDD wasn't going to be recognised as almost all of these DVD/HDD recorders use a Linux EXT filesystem that isn't recognised in most versions of Windows without extra software. There are third party tools that allow you to do so, some are even free. However even if you are able to see the drive you might not be able to access it as some manufacturers tweak the filesystem or even encrypt it to prevent copying the files off it. I've had decent luck with just using a USB stick with a live bootable Linux distro on it and was able to copy files off my Liteon and also my old Datastream PVR.
I know that my very old Pioneer DVD/HDD recorder actually just throws data at an unpartitioned hard drive: I don't mean it only has one partition, I mean NO partitions! It's very low level; There will certainly be data on there which helps the player find the titles, specify chapters and titles etc, but it sure isn't something that can be read on any computer without dumping the whole drive raw into a file (using the Linux "dd" command, for instance) and reverse-engineering the contents.
Dubbing to DVD on the recorder itself is really the only practical way to extract data, unfortunately.
It makes sense. Not only would they won't have to pay for a file system licence, but it would also theoretically prevent unauthorized copying.
@@negirno Yeah, probably just the cheapest way to do it in the firmware and yeah some minor obfuscation. I imagine a data recovery tool might locate the bare MPEG streams on the disk, but there might be some additional structure or a layer of data to deal with fragmentation and things which would make this not work.
@@Aeduo Oh god, I forgot that the data would be fragmented! Unless someone with reverse engineering experience has done some legwork already, that Pioneer drive ain't readable!
Most DVD recorder hard drives have unusual file systems so can’t be read directly by a PC, but there is software that can extract the recordings. I can vouch for Isobuster, for example, which works for my Pioneer recorder and lists your Magnavox in the formats that it can read - might be worth a try.
I'd have right clicked on the Start Menu and picked Disk Management (at least that's how it works on Windows 11 and possibly Windows 10)
The disk very likely would have shown up as an unrecognised disk.
There's also the possibility that the DVR runs a version of Linux and uses a Linux filesystem (or BSD + BSD filesystem, who knows)
All in all, getting someone who uses and knows Linux is definitely a good choice if you have no confidence in using Linux yourself.
Right-click on the Start button and select Disk Manager to view the partition for some clues. Often retail electronics use a Linux-based os and so the disk may be in ext3 or 4. Boot a knoppix CD and see if it can read it.
my lg dvd hdd rec uses nornal ext3 filesystem, and it was pretty common back in the day. just throw some ubuntu on a usb stick and the drive should just appear on the pc when you plug it in. it's easier to do that than to install windows, literally.
A Macintosh can, by default, read FAT32 filesystems. Pretty much every USB memory stick is in this format. They can also read High Sierra (old CD format) and NTFS without any trouble.
it would most likely be encrypted to prevent what you are trying.
It most likely is security through obscurity, since no one implements security correctly.
It would probably be best to make an image of the drive. I think MacOS has some pretty good tools for that.
@orincat10 Does it handle filesystems and partitions it doesn't understand? IMO, the best way to accomplish a reliable backup of something like this is with Unix/Linux 'dd' utility - it makes a bit-for-bit copy of the raw drive data to another drive or file, no matter what's on it, with no understanding of the contents, filesystem, or partition table, just an exact, raw bit-for-bit copy.
The Hard Drive doesn't have a Master/Slave Jumper does it? Like you gotta move the little piece of plastic to slave or it won't read?
It's SATA so that's not an option
If you ever want to make that Windows 10 laptop a bit faster, go to the startup tab in Task Manager and just disable most of the pre-installed software; uninstalling OneDrive and McAfee (if you don't use either) will make a noticeable improvement for latency and speed next time you decide to dig it out, especially if it has a hard drive.
I'd be happy to shoot you an email with some other tips and tricks if you'd like, I do this sort of thing for my day job (unfortunately lol). That said, most of it will likely come down to "yeah these pieces of software are bloat, uninstall them, reboot, install some updates and then it'll be significantly more responsive". Downside is that I don't know what all is on there and it mostly just looks like a fresh OEM bloat-filled Windows install from what little I can see.
That was a fresh OEM install of W10 with all the garbage disabled! That was a hand-me-down laptop from my folks.
That sucks- I have the entire local morning show on a station’s last day of analog recorded on one of these. If I record it to a DVD it will only take a single layer disc and compress the hell out of it. I could split it up but that would be permanent and I’d possibly lose a couple seconds in between. Guess I will forever have to watch that off the hard disk.
I wonder if it is Linux? This is very perplexing. Still a good video though.
There is no one Linux filesystem. There are dozens of commonly used, depending on the flavor of Linux and era created.
@@princeofcupspoc9073 I know that. I was just wondering why it could not be read is all. If it is Linux, it would be an older flavor
@@princeofcupspoc9073 I hope it's not EXt2 as I was reading the latest releases of the Linux kernel are finally dropping EXT2 support.
Oof.
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