Help w/external HD

[Paddy]

Help!!  I used my backup external HD Maxtor 188 g to see if I could offload some stuff I'd recorded on my Dishnetwork DVR.  The DVR receiver reformatted the HD and now XP won't recognize it.  What to do?  I need to re-backup the PC HD. 

[Ben]

Won't recognize it as a hard drive, or won't recognize it as a device when it's plugged in (I'm assuming USB)? If it recognizes it as a device, but not a hard drive, go to administrative tools/computer management/disk management and see if it shows up as an unformatted hard drive. If it does, you'll have an option for formatting.

NOTE: If you're at all unsure about what you're doing, be extremely careful that you don't accidentally format any of your internal drives! Disk 0 should be your "C" drive, which you don't want to touch (formatting option should actually be grayed out, but just in case). If you're at all uncomfortable, you might want to wait for more replies, in case someone else has an easier way to check the drive.

[JimMarch]

Yeah, lemme make a suggestion here: download Ubuntu.  NOT because I'm telling you to switch.

http://www.ubuntu.com/getubuntu/download

OK.  If you download the "standard desktop installer" disk (7.10 Gutsy Gibbon), it can start your machine from the CD and run that way - it's called a "LiveCD boot".  It won't change anything on the hard disk until you use the "install" icon on the desktop.

Once it's up, plug in that external drive.

Linux can recognize a slew of disk formats that Windoze can't cope with.

Under the "System" pull-down menu, you'll find "administration".  Under that you'll find "partition editor".  With that open, you can select your various disks in the top-right corner.  It will tell you what partition types are there on each disk, internal and external.  This is by far the fastest way to figure out what a given disk is formatted as!

Once you know the partition type for the external hard disk, report back.  There are utilities to allow Windows to read *some* Linux-type partitions, esp. Ext3 (the most common).  The Tivo is a Linux box, odds are it's using that or ReiserFS.  Maybe JFS.  Find out, and I'll look up the Windows driver you need.

[Paddy]

Thanks Jim, can't do it. Too complicated, too many steps. Already tried and it's no go.

[Vodka7]

It's formatted to EXT2/3, and the files themselves are encrypted.  Meaning, even if you mount the drive in windows, which isn't trivial, you won't be able to do anything with the files (like, for instance, watch them.)

It *SHOULD* show up in Drive Management if you follow Ben's instructions.  There are other ways to do it, but his is the most user friendly.  Follow his instructions and format the drive to NTFS or FAT32 so you can use it as a backup again.  You will lose any files you had transferred from your DVR.

(The Administrative Tools option is under Control Panel/Performance and Maintenance btw.)

[Jamisjockey]

I read the title and thought you were working on external Home Defense....
 

[JimMarch]

Using Ubuntu in LiveCD mode and Partition Editor, you can SHRINK the existing Ext3 partition down.  Let's say it's a 188gig but only 50gig is used.  You should be able to recover about 100+ gig of free space which can be set up as Fat32 or NTFS in Windows.

Yet plug the drive back into the Tivo and it will see the now-smaller Linux partition - and all of it's existing data which will almost certainly survive the shrink process.

[Paddy]

Thank you for the help.  I bought a second external hard drive for the computer, and inexpensive Maxtor 250gb with it's own software which doesn't seem to work very well, so I'll continue to use MS 'Backup'.

The DVR wants to format the hd first time it's plugged in, so I have no idea if it would allow any partitions. FWIW, one hour of standard definition programming uses 1gb.