Samsung HD502HI Hard Drive from Direct TV DVR : Solved

[Johnny10]

I was dumpster diving over the past weekend and found some old Direct TV Boxes. Two of them contain 500GB Hard Drives that I want to salvage and use in my desktop machine.

I did some research and seems they are Linux based and to get the HD to work on Windows machines they must be started in the Direct TV machine then hot swapped with a USB to the PC. Where they can be erased and Formatted to work on the PC.

The box I have started with contains a Samsung 502HI HD and is Model # ViP722K.

I have had success Partitioning, formatting the drive with NTFS and using the drive on my Win 7 machine. Watching a movie I brought over to the HD.

But each time I turn off the Drive it loses that information and I must go through the process of starting the HD in the Direct Drive machine, then swapping the SATA connection to the USB all over again.

What am I missing?

[fluxcapacitor]

It could be related to the chip set on your motherboard. knowledge.seagate.com/articles/en_US/FAQ/223631en. ,also check the drive for hidden partitions,check with partimage boot disk or try mini tool partition wizard. If you prefer to make a boot able flash drive use rufus

[kc8apf]

Sounds like an ATA password is set and the DirectTV box's firmware unlocks it. If they are not freezing the security state, you should be able to unset the password on the windows machine.  I typically mess with ATA passwords on Linux so I don't know what windows tools you need offhand.

Sent from my Nexus 5X using Tapatalk

[Johnny10]

I made Live Ubuntu USB disk with HDParm and gparted installed.
I probably should post the Identify information but I believe the problem relates to using a USB adapter with the SATA connection.
I initialize the disk in the Direct TV machine then hot swap the connection to my laptop via USB.
I can see and manipulate through the Ubuntu terminal window all commands I have tried except the -restore command.
And  I did set the -- yes -i- know- what- i -am- doing Flag.
I tried a HDPARM --dco-restore command and it failed on Input/Output error.
Bios related? Possibly.
Maybe I should try eliminating the USB  connection and going into my desktop machine with SATA connection.
Seems I read that commands are not always read properly USB to SATA.

Do I know what I am doing???
Probably a lot of guessing here :-)

[kc8apf]

USB-SATA adapters _can_ cause problems but I've changed ATA security settings using a variety of chipsets without issue.  It's more likely that the DirectTV firmware freezes the security state after it unlocks the drive.  Once the security state is frozen, none of the settings can be changed until after a power cycle.  You'd need to figure out the password.

[Johnny10]

Well it is Linux all the way on these drives.
After familiarizing myself with a couple of versions of Linux... Debian, Ubuntu and creating the "Live" installations.
Then learning a bit about two programs, that are quite new to me... gparted and hdparm.

I was able after a few more attempts to put this process in the right order and create a useable 500 GB drive for free.

Process is:
1. Initialize/Power up drive in Direct TV DVR box.
2. After power up, Hot swap SATA cable to computer. ( I used laptop and USB to SATA module )
3. Open gparted find the drive /dev/sdX. ( X your drive letter )
4. Delete all partitions on the drive.  (there were 4 different partitions on my drive)
5. Create new partition in the format you require, ie. NTFS, Fat32 and many other choices.
6. Apply the changes through the checkmark menu item.  ( very nice feature that saves from mistakes )
7. Close gparted.
8. Back to the terminal window.
9. Enter Sudo su
10 Enter hdparm -s0 /dev/sdX
11. Receive successful Spin up "off" response.
12. Unplug your drive from the Direct TV box
13. Plug into new power supply .
14. Plug drive into computer and there you have it.

This was discarded unit dated 2008.

[kc8apf]

Huh.  Yes, power-up in standby mode would explain what you were seeing.  I have no idea why a set-top box would configure a drive that way though.  Usually that's used for large drive arrays so powerup can be staggered.  Either way, only the hdparm command is strictly necessary.  You can repartition the drive on Windows with no problems.  There are probably tools for Windows to do the equivalent of the hdparm command as well.

[Johnny10]

I think this is a problem with reusing Hard Drives from these boxes.
Found a lot of people during search trying to figure out this problem and bricking their HD or not having success.
Most of those posts were 2009 I guess when these boxes were more plentiful?