Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE: Dolby DSS200 not recognizing external drive in CRU

This is topic Dolby DSS200 not recognizing external drive in CRU in forum Digital Cinema Forum at Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE.

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Posted by Tony Bandiera Jr (Member # 2365) on 01-28-2012, 05:28 PM:

Hey gang, new problem:

Trying to transfer content from my server onto a CRU drive , and the server is not recognizing the drive in the CRU bay..why?

It is a Hitachi 1TB drive.. is there a size limit on the external drives this thing will accept?

Posted by Steve Guttag (Member # 268) on 01-28-2012, 05:48 PM:

How has it been formated? Has it been formatted?

Posted by Tony Bandiera Jr (Member # 2365) on 01-28-2012, 05:54 PM:

ah ha..I got the drive from F-T so I would hope it is formatted..if not, can I use the DSS 200 to format it?

EDIT: Never mind, got the answer from the Grand Poo-Bah by email....

Yes I need to format it first..doh!!

Posted by Steve Guttag (Member # 268) on 01-28-2012, 06:57 PM:

Ah ha! It is normally the simplest things!

Drives don't normally come formatted since one does not know how they will be used. Furthermore, if a drive is formatted in a manner not to what you will use it for...then it becomes worthless until it is made formattable again (see Brad's post elsewhere).

-Steve

Posted by Tony Bandiera Jr (Member # 2365) on 01-29-2012, 12:06 PM:

Well after doing some digging (and a helpful email from Brad) found out the drive needs to be formatted to the "ext3" Linux standard. I had found some discussions of drivers for Windows-based systems that allow Win x to READ ext3 drives, but they are not clear if they can format a drive that way. And a few have warnings that the code is unstable and can cause system crashes and loss of data. [Eek!]

I may have to install Linux OS on my desktop computer (I don't use it much anyways) to be able to format this drive.

And of course I needed that drive ready to rock yesterday for a job on Monday. [Roll Eyes]

Posted by Jonas Jakobsson (Member # 5596) on 01-29-2012, 12:42 PM:

I did this a while ago. Although I'm not any familiar with Linux at all I managed to format my new hard drive to ext3 and successfully used it with DSS200. [Smile]

1) Create a bootable USB-memorystick with Linux GParted. http://gparted.sourceforge.net

2) Plug in your new hard drive.

3) Boot from USB-stick. And use Gparted to format your new drive.
However, according to DCI-specifications you should format with an INODE-size of 128 due to compability issues. The default is 256. So for this a had to start the terminal and run the command "mkfs.ext2 -j -I 128 /dev/..."
or you could use "mkfs.ext3 -I 128 /dev/...

I had to run that command in terminal as SU.

To read and write to your new harddrive from Windows I'm using:
http://ext2fsd.sourceforge.net/

Good luck!

Posted by Tony Bandiera Jr (Member # 2365) on 01-29-2012, 01:02 PM:

Jonas, thanks!!

I take it the "..." after the /dev/ is the drive number that is to be formatted?

I'll try it out later and let you all know how it goes.

Posted by Steve Guttag (Member # 268) on 01-29-2012, 01:06 PM:

Note...Dolby does offer a CRU drive (500GB) already in the CRU, preformatted for a reasonable price to avoid all of this "fun"

-Steve

Posted by Tony Bandiera Jr (Member # 2365) on 01-29-2012, 01:13 PM:

Now Steve, that would be too easy wouldn't it? [Big Grin]

I agree it would save some potential aggravation, but I have always been someone who prefers to get to the "nuts and bolts" of any equipment/system so I feel it would be better in the long term for me to learn the ins and outs. (Besides, if I am ever in another situation where I'll need a drive to save content in a hurry I now will know what to do.)

A good Jedi accepts the challenges and since I am now deep into the Dark Side I must keep learning. [Big Grin]

Posted by Jonas Jakobsson (Member # 5596) on 01-29-2012, 01:23 PM:

quote: Tony Bandiera Jr
I take it the "..." after the /dev/ is the drive number that is to be formatted?

By trial and error I found out thats probably the partition you want to format. In my first attempt I tried to format the whole drive which didn't work at all (I simply couldn't access it at all). After making the whole drive as one partition instead (with the GUI) and after that format the partition with the terminal it worked just fine.

To find out what to write after the "/dev/" I simply looked in the GUI [Smile]

By the way, I did use "Windows Method A":
http://gparted.sourceforge.net/liveusb.php

Posted by Tony Bandiera Jr (Member # 2365) on 02-10-2012, 11:12 PM:

Jonas, thanks for the advice...as you might have seen in the "Deadbeats" thread I had a slight problem lately and my laptop, all USB thumb drives and a lot of other stuff was stolen so it has put this on the back burner for now.

I'll let you know how it works out when I recover from all the damage.

Posted by Jussi Siponen (Member # 5572) on 02-12-2012, 02:21 PM:

How to do the whole shebang from Linux shell (command line):

- Based on the Distribution Device File System Recommendations document from the ISDCF web site (MBR partition table, 1 primary partition, ext3 file system, 128 bit inodes).
- The following assumes root shell on Linux (for e.g. Ubuntu you need to add "sudo" in front of the commands.
- The previously unformmatted hard drive is assumed to be at /dev/sdc -- VERIFY BEFORE YOU PROCEED!
- User input is in bold
- One or more lines omitted of program output marked "..."

Creating one primary partition covering the whole hard drive

root@tomcat1 ~# fdisk /dev/sdc
...
Command (m for help): n
Command action
e extended
p primary partition (1-4)

p

Partition number (1-4): 1
First cylinder (1-243201, default 1): <ENTER>
Using default value 1
Last cylinder or +size or +sizeM or +sizeK (1-243201, default 243201): <ENTER>
Using default value 243201

Command (m for help): w
The partition table has been altered!

Calling ioctl() to re-read partition table.
Syncing disks.

Formatting the partition

root@tomcat1 ~# mkfs -t ext3 -m 1 -T largefile4 -I 128 /dev/sdc1
mke2fs 1.39 (29-May-2006)
...

Writing inode tables: done
Creating journal (32768 blocks): done
Writing superblocks and filesystem accounting information: done

This filesystem will be automatically checked every 34 mounts or
180 days, whichever comes first. Use tune2fs -c or -i to override.