I think the hard disk has died (or is dying) in my Live Hub. Sometimes it will play, sometimes it will stop playing mid-film and all you can hear from the box is ker-chunk, ker-chunk, ker-chunk. I’ve heard a few hard disks die before, and they sounded like this 
It’s out of warranty, so I was thinking I could just whip the lid off, remove the existing disk, stick a new one in, and carry on…right?
I have a spare 1Tb SATA drive - 3.5", do I need to do anything to it first? Format it, partition it? How easy is it, once de-lidded, to swap the drives? When I boot it with a new drive in, will the software load up from some sort of ROM or do I need to flash it?
Cheers.
Bill.
The disk will only be recognized if it’s a WD Scorpio Blue…
I would suggest you delete ALL the partitions. If it’s recognized, it will prompt you to format it.
Seriously, you have to use a specific drive!? Nuts…
Anyone know what my options are for getting it repaired - it’s over 12 months old so I think the warranty has expired, but presumably the drives are warranted for more than a year?
@BungalowBill
Seriously, you have to use a specific drive!? Nuts…
You obviously dont own an XBox 360 … here’s a fun word, “Proprietary”
I own a Playstation 3 as well, but you can use ANY 2.5" Sata Hdd Drive Replacement.
BungalowBill wrote:
… presumably the drives are warranted for more than a year?
No, drives are only warranted separately if sold separately.
Getting a hard drive repaired will be FAR more expensive than just getting a new Hub.
Before I trashed the unit, I would pull the hard drive and get the info off it (serial and model numbers) and run it through WD’s Warranty check.
http://websupport.wdc.com/warranty/serialinput.asp?aspsid=561824346&custtype=end&requesttype=warranty&lang=en
You never know until you try and you might get a nice suprize…
Of course, I would prefer not to trash it at all - but given that clunking sounds are indicative of a hardware fault…
When you force a format from the interface, does it check the disk for errors and mark them as bad?
Occasionally I have found a folder appear called “Found” containing file000.chk - something I used to see in the days of ChkDsk on PC’s - does this mean that the software is checking the drive for errors anyway?
If I pulled the disk out, formatted it on a PC and did a check, and marked the bad sectors, could I then put it back in, format it and carry on? What format is the drive natively - NTFS?
Can you tell I am not ready to throw away $250 worth of kit that is only 13 months old…!
Cheers all.
I suggest you take the hard drive out and hook it up in a computer and run the Data lifeguard Diagnostic Software from http://support.wdc.com/product/download.asp?groupid=702〈=en. This will help you find out if the hard drive is really broken. You might even be able to submit an RMA by checking the serial number here http://websupport.wdc.com/warranty/serialinput.asp?aspsid=797884008&custtype=end&requesttype=warranty〈=en. If it is making a lot of noise as you indicated, reformatting it won’t do any good.
