19 replies to this topic

[emsgeorge]

We have a client with a DS2 - the hard drive seems semi screwed on it - its an 80gb version, yet the software only shows a total of 13gb avaiable for recording (and yes, ive checked the protected bit).

I found the unit on its side, and it had been operated like this for a few months - they thought it would be 'space saving'. I always thought drives didnt like being on their side.

The software seems to be ok, the system boots and records as it should. The only thing is the amount of 'space' it has - im assuming the position its been in has created a lot of bad sectors.

Can I add a slave drive onto the system without having to get one form norbain etc ?. Does it need any special formatting / software to be a slave, or will 'any old drive' do, as long as its a certain format ?

Any help apprecated

George

[jameswilson]

unless you have had the course i dont think you can chnage a drive yourself it will have to go back. ALso AFAIK a drive can be used any way up, however it may have affected the cooling and the drive simply overheated

[breff]

It may be worth rebuilding the image control file, carry out a shutdown except when it says to hold down number 1 button you hold down another (2,3 or 5, can't remember, maybe someone else can confirm) and the machine will reboot and come up with a message that it is rebuilding the file

[camullins]

emsgeorge, on Apr 30 2009, 05:16 PM, said:

We have a client with a DS2 - the hard drive seems semi screwed on it - its an 80gb version, yet the software only shows a total of 13gb avaiable for recording (and yes, ive checked the protected bit).

I found the unit on its side, and it had been operated like this for a few months - they thought it would be 'space saving'. I always thought drives didnt like being on their side.

The software seems to be ok, the system boots and records as it should. The only thing is the amount of 'space' it has - im assuming the position its been in has created a lot of bad sectors.

Can I add a slave drive onto the system without having to get one form norbain etc ?. Does it need any special formatting / software to be a slave, or will 'any old drive' do, as long as its a certain format ?

Any help apprecated

George

You can do this yourself.
Adding a slave is easy aslong as the right leads are in the machine.

PM me.

[emsgeorge]

Thanks for the replies everyone - wil try the image file thingy first, if not, its off to buy another drive. And having spoken to DM, the cost for them to put in another drive is silly - considering the unit is out of warranty, and i'm more than capable of opening up the lid and slotting another one in.

Camilluns - will pm you shortly, thanks for the advice.

[emsgeorge]

I cant PM yet - I dont have permission !. Anyone able to help me with this issue.

And I cant seem to get the 'image control file' rebuild to run, all I manage to do is halt the bootloader. Typically, im working late, and its a bank hol weekend.

[jameswilson]

If the hard drive is screwed, then adding a slave wont work as the main drive is shot.
If the main drive is working fine then adding a slave is possible, but IMO not when the main system drive has failed.

[emsgeorge]

Having had a chat with the boss, I think you are right - although the current drive seems to of lost a lot of its image part of the drive, the boot bit is totally fine. From reading DM's site, its a very early model ds2, and the boot is on the hard drive - so it will only be a matter of time until the rest of it is screwed (and I dont want to be back at site soon !), so there is little long term gsain from adding another drive as just video storage.

Not having sent anything 'out of warranty' back to DS, does anyone have any experience of them ?. I see some guy selling new drives on ebay - might see how much ds want to do a swap, otherside, its to the ebay bloke !.

[jameswilson]

we always send our dm's back for repair, they will test it fully and repeair what they find etc. Always been very good to us. Not cheap but then it is a top end machine and even your very old one (8 yr old?) will give new machines a run for their money.

[camullins]

emsgeorge, on Apr 30 2009, 05:16 PM, said:

We have a client with a DS2 - the hard drive seems semi screwed on it - its an 80gb version, yet the software only shows a total of 13gb avaiable for recording (and yes, ive checked the protected bit).

I found the unit on its side, and it had been operated like this for a few months - they thought it would be 'space saving'. I always thought drives didnt like being on their side.

The software seems to be ok, the system boots and records as it should. The only thing is the amount of 'space' it has - im assuming the position its been in has created a lot of bad sectors.

Can I add a slave drive onto the system without having to get one form norbain etc ?. Does it need any special formatting / software to be a slave, or will 'any old drive' do, as long as its a certain format ?

Any help apprecated

George

I have changed drives before with no problems. Just use good IDE's.
But don't go OTT with the size. If I remember there is a limit.
The fans may need replacing (RS) as they do pack up and so the drives overheat.

[SUBS]

camullins, on May 3 2009, 11:22 PM, said:

I have changed drives before with no problems. Just use good IDE's.
But don't go OTT with the size. If I remember there is a limit.
The fans may need replacing (RS) as they do pack up and so the drives overheat.

On DM machines ? I didnt think you could do it easily with theirs.

[Cyberprog]

Changing drives on DM units is incredibly simple once you've got the hang of it.

Basically you start with an IDE drive (or SATA if you have a Startech or Avtech SATA>IDE Adapter) and a suitable PC to work from.

Add the Drive to the PC as another slave drive (or more likely these days, use a USB adapter to bring it on like a portable hard disk).

Using diskpart from the command prompt, do "list disk" and then "select disk x" where x is the additional drive you've added.

Remove all the partitions from the disk by doing "list partition" and "delete partition x" for each partition.

Now do "create partition primary" and "assign". The new partition will now show up in My Computer with all the available space your drive has.

If you're adding the drive as an additional unit, you can stop here and set the drive as slave on the jumper and connect it up and fire the DVR up. It'll start building the image partition after a few moments once the cameras appear. Don't reboot it during that time.

If you're adding the drive to replace the primary, now you need to identify what your unit is via the boot screen (DVTR, DVTU, DVTX etc.) and download the appropriate firmware zip file from the Dedicated Micros website.
Extract all these files, and copy the "bin" "bootload" and "disk.zip" to the root of the new hard disk. You don't need the ftp or the readme, they're used when upgrading the firmware remotely.

Now set the drive jumper to master and connect it up and fire the DVR up. It'll start building the image partition after a few moments once the cameras appear. Don't reboot it during that time. If you've changed the Slave drive, once the Primary is done, the Slave will also rebuild.

Beware, if you're using big disks this will take a long time. IIRC my 2TB DVTX (using sata > ide adapters) took several hours to build.

[jameswilson]

I have a few (7) old shape ds2 units with dead hard disks. Can i bring them back to life with above?

[Cyberprog]

Yes, of course James. If you drop me a PM, I'll send you a link to the auction for the SATA > IDE Adapters I've been using.

[breff]

Yes James, I've done it as well, as Cyberprog says, it takes a while to rebuild the image partition

[Cyberprog]

I'm not 100% sure on the biggest drive that can be inserted atm, may try some 750GB SATA's on my DVTR's here, but the DVTX units happily took 1TB drives - IIRC DM did a 2TB version towards the end of the run of the DS2's anyway.

[jameswilson]

i have the adaptors needed but never opened up a dm, have always sent em back or pulled them out... hence the few i have. " of them still function so im guessing i can use g4l etc to pull the image off?

[Cyberprog]

If you need to image them I guess, but there's no real need. Just download the FW from DM's site, copy from the zip to the drive, job done.

Not all adapters work BTW, they need to have master/slave jumpers for starters which a lot don't.

[jameswilson]

master slave on the adapter? i thought that was set by cable and or drive jumper?

[Cyberprog]

Yes, on a PC you would normally have Master/Slave detection, and on a standard IDE drive you would have a drive jumper.
However this is a Dedicated Micros DVR, I don't believe they support autoselect, and secondly a SATA drive is designed to be used on a single channel - and therefore is always a master. So the adapter has to do this job.