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01-05-2012, 09:06 PM
conductor71 conductor71 is offline
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I previously owned a JVC DR-MX10SEK video recorder and experienced problems from the very start playing DVDs, which I initially blamed on the quality of my DVDs. After a couple of years, I got so frustrated with it that I opened it up and tried to take the DVD drive out to examine it. When I put it all back together again, the machine would not play at all. I just got the message 'Waiting' or 'Loading' (can't remember which) and was never able to use it again. When I changed address last year, I removed the Seagate 160GB hard drive and kept it, but threw away the rest of the machine.

I would now dearly love to be able to recover my TV recordings from that drive, but how?? It is a Seagate U Series 9 160 GB hard drive with the model number ST3160022ACE.

I just purchased a MAGIC BRIDGE Storage Bridge to connect the Seagate drive to my PC via the USB port. However, it was not recognised in Windows Explorer. I then went into 'Computer Management' and it showed up in 'Device Manager' - 'Disk Drives' but when I looked for it in 'Disk Management', Disk 1 was listed as offline and there was no information viewable about the Seagate drive. I consulted the Seagate website for a solution but the only advice I could find was that the drive needed to be formatted.

Obviously I do not intend to to do that as I am trying to recover data from the drive with the intention of moving it onto my PC.

Can it be done and if so, how? (in non-Geek language if possible!)

Jerry.
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  #2  
01-10-2012, 07:24 AM
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Unfortunately, that probably cannot be done.

Most specialty devices, including DVD recorders and DVRs/TiVos, use a proprietary file system for storing data on the hard drives. I've never dismantled a JVC HDD recorder, so I cannot say for certain what FS is in use on the drive. It certainly won't be possible on a Windows computer, because Windows has a very narrow and limited comprehension of files systems, mostly limited to FAT16/32, NTFS and exFAT. At best, the JVC recorder may have a Linux FS in use. You'd want to connect it to a computer running Ubuntu. There's a slight chance a Mac would see the drive, too, since OS X is the Darwin distribution of Linux. (Ubuntu is still better for data recover, however.)

None of this will be non-geeky. In fact, this is probably one of the geekiest tasks you'd ever do on a computer.

And it has probably a 50/50 success rate, with us not knowing the FS of the JVC drives.

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  #3  
01-11-2012, 06:24 AM
conductor71 conductor71 is offline
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Thanks for replying, although the news wasn't as good as I hoped. All my computers are running Windows. For what it's worth, I still have the DR MX10SEK instructions and it says the video recording compression system on the hard drive is MPEG2 (VBR). However, I am quite sure that is not the same thing as the proprietary file system you are referring to here, otherwise you would know what it was.

I now have a Humax Foxsat-HDR digital television recorder for Freesat and was wondering what would happen if I used the Magic Bridge to try to connect this JVC external hard drive via the Humax USB slot- whether there is a possibility of damaging the JVC hard drive in the process, and the chances of its contents being successfully detected by the Humax. I guess I am now venturing into the realms of future external back-up drives for my Humax, although in this particular example I am still hoping to back-up the external JVC drive until such time as I feel the data just can't be recovered, in which case it could maybe act as a back-up drive if it is not damaged.

I suppose that if I re-purchased another JVC MX10SEK, I might be able to connect my own hard drive to it and maybe it would recognise it? However, I recall that it was quite a tricky procedure removing the hard drive from the old machine so it may not be something that I will actively consider doing, as there is always the possibility that I damaged the hard drive in the process of taking it out and then moving house with it, although it is thankfully not making any clicking sounds when I connect it to my PC.
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  #4  
01-17-2012, 03:03 AM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by conductor71 View Post
it says the video recording compression system on the hard drive is MPEG2 (VBR). However, I am quite sure that is not the same thing as the proprietary file system you are referring to here, otherwise you would know what it was.
MPEG-2 is the format of the video encoding.
It's completely separate from the file system, which is the format for how data is stored on the physical drive.

Quote:
wondering what would happen if I used the Magic Bridge to try to connect this JVC external hard drive via the Humax USB slot-
Like the JVC, it may have a proprietary file system, too. I don't know enough about the Humax off-hand to specify one way or the other. Research would be required.

Quote:
whether there is a possibility of damaging the JVC hard drive in the process,
There's always a chance of damage any time a hard drive is handled, moved between hardware, or powered up/down in any way. Chances can be slim, but the possibility is always there. And this is regardless of whether its in a computer, in a video device, etc.

Quote:
and the chances of its contents being successfully detected by the Humax.
I doubt it. Sure, try it, see what happens. You never know what may happen.

Quote:
I guess I am now venturing into the realms of future external back-up drives for my Humax
I'll be glad to help you spec out some drives. Just start a new thread in the Home Entertainment and Videography subforum, and we'll give you some suggestions on reliable drives, at reasonable prices, and from which stores you should look to buy them (online, rarely brick-and-mortar).

Quote:
I suppose that if I re-purchased another JVC MX10SEK, I might be able to connect my own hard drive to it and maybe it would recognise it?
This is very likely, yes.

Quote:
However, I recall that it was quite a tricky procedure removing the hard drive from the old machine so it may not be something that I will actively consider doing, as there is always the possibility that I damaged the hard drive in the process of taking it out and then moving house with it
Regardless of what you do, you'll have to handle the drive, if you ever hope to recover the data. The Linux computer method would work. This could be done with a Linux boot CD/DVD, too -- you don't have to erase your Windows computers. There are also external $10 gadgets that let you turn an internal hard drive into a USB2 drive, which may help for connecting to a computer.

Quote:
although it is thankfully not making any clicking sounds when I connect it to my PC.
This is good.

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  #5  
01-05-2015, 07:37 PM
conductor71 conductor71 is offline
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It is now exactly three years since I first started this thread. Despite the helpful advice received then, I wasn't able to recover the contents of the Seagate hard drive from my former JVC DR-MX10SEK combie.

However, I have recently discovered and downloaded new free software (Seagate Seatools for Windows/ DiskInternals Linux Reader/ Ex2 FSD Volume Manager) and I have again tried connecting my old Seagate HDD to my Windows laptop.

This time, when I tried looking in Windows 'Computer Management', ('Device Manager' and 'Disk Management'), the Seagate drive was detected as 'Disk 1' but unfortunately no volume information was displayed. The drive's type was described as 'dynamic', the status was 'invalid' and the partition style was 'Master Boot Record'.

When I opened Seatools, although I was not able to do the 'drive information' test, the Seagate drive did pass the 'short generic' test. I didn't do the advanced test as I was concerned about losing whatever data might still be recoverable on the drive.

When I opened Linux Reader and did a scan, it detected the drive and when I right-clicked on properties, it showed the sizes of the 3 volumes on the hard drive (21.05 GB, 128 GB and 31 KB), as well as the hard drive's capacity (160 GB), total sectors and bytes per sector. This is encouraging. However, I still can't seem to view any of the actual files or file types, which would be old video recordings captured off-air from TV.

I am not sure what to do now. In Linux Reader, I have the choice of opening or re-opening the partition, creating or mounting an image and 'hex preview'. I don't know what any of these actions would achieve.

Any suggestions most welcome. Just to remind you that I no longer have the original JVC DR-MX10SEK combie- I only kept the hard drive when I dumped the machine.
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  #6  
01-12-2015, 07:42 AM
NJRoadfan NJRoadfan is offline
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Its likely the drive is protected with a drive password, a part of the ATA standard.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paralle...s_and_security

I recall a friend having to deal with this when he upgraded the hard drive in a DirecTV DVR and later a Xbox that he owned. That machine also had a U series Seagate in it. Most of these DVRs use a standard file system, but go out their way to encrypt or "break" standard ways of reading it.
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  #7  
01-13-2015, 05:31 AM
mrmuy97 mrmuy97 is offline
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Your issues with the device from the beginning may very well have been caused by the hard drive. I wouldn't consider many IDE drives as overly reliable, and something like bad sectors, which were and still are one of the most common issues, could easily have been causing you trouble. My guess is that the 21GB partition you were able to see (if the info was accurate) is the system partition, and the 128GB is where your data is stored. You mentioned the manual stating that videos were compressed using MPEG-2 and hopefully the file type they were saved as is something standard as well.

It's unlikely that anything would happen at all (recognition/deletion/etc) if you plugged it into your new recorder due to the structure used by JVC, but I still wouldn't risk connecting the Seagate to anything other than a computer when ready to attempt recovery. Likewise, the SeaTools utility can be useful, but as you rightly decided it's best not to run any more tests on it until after you've attempted recovery, just to be safe. Linux Reader was useful for the additional info you acquired, but I don't see any further use for it either as there are better tools available to help you at this point.

As far as what to do next, I'd suggest a few things. First I think you want to decide if you're going to clone the Seagate before proceeding any further. It's not critically important but is always a good idea when possible. You'd can either directly clone a partition, directly clone the entire drive, or save an image of a partition or drive as an image file. Keep in mind that depending on how much video you have on there if it's in the 128GB partition and how full the 21GB partition is, that could end up requiring nearly the full 160GB of space.

After deciding that, I'd look at whether you want to keep trying on a computer or try your idea of purchasing a working used model of the original unit and swapping your drive in. In my opinion that's very likely to work, but you stated that you were having issues with it from day one. If those issues were caused by the Seagate -- e.g. if the 21GB partition does contain system files and it has errors -- you'd most likely be back where you started and have a glitchy machine to work with again, or worse. In light of that I'd recommend the computer option first, and maybe trying the HDD swap in a used unit if all else fails. If you do decide to go that route, I came across a thread with some info about restoring a factory image to the HDD (probably meaning the 21GB partition is indeed the system partition) which might be useful.

You saw the improved info that Linux Reader gave you, and my advice for your next utility would be something like the Ultimate Boot CD that contains PartedMagic. PartedMagic is a Linux-based recovery environment; booting into it is similar to booting a Linux LiveCD. In PartedMagic you are able to use various utilities to look for more info on your disk, perform the cloning operations, and most importantly you can run PhotoRec. If you're unable to make any further progress in mounting the Seagate's partitions to be able to view the files, PhotoRec can be used despite that to scan the disk for known file types even though you have no access to them. With any luck the JVC didn't use some proprietary file type for the MPEG-2 compression. A best-case scenario for that would be running PhotoRec and having the 128GB partition selectable, and having 128GB or more of free space on whatever separate HDD (internal or external doesn't matter) for those files to be copied to, followed by successful recovery of all the files from that partition, including your saved videos.

Can you also give an updated list of what computers you have access to for this and their basic specs? Brand and model, desktop or laptop, OS, CPU, RAM, HDD to start. Also info on any extra/external/etc HDDs that you can use.
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  #8  
01-13-2015, 08:46 AM
conductor71 conductor71 is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by mrmuy97 View Post

Can you also give an updated list of what computers you have access to for this and their basic specs? Brand and model, desktop or laptop, OS, CPU, RAM, HDD to start. Also info on any extra/external/etc HDDs that you can use.
First of all, many thanks to both of you for these really informative responses. I will just deal with my computer's specs for the moment. I have a couple of decade-old Windows XP computers (a laptop and a desktop) still available, but for these latest checks I used my newer Acer Extensa 5230E laptop. Its specs are as follows:

Operating system: Windows 7 Home Premium Service Pack 1 (64 bit);
RAM: 4GB installed;
Processor: Intel (R) Celeron (R) CPU 900 @ 2.20 GHz

Unfortunately there is only 61GB free space remaining out of 137GB on the Acer hard drive (model no: WDC 1600BEVT-22ZCT0) so I would probably need some additional external storage, which currently I don't have. I am also in a period of financial austerity, so to speak, so it may have to wait several months before I can seriously look at purchasing extra storage as other things must take priority.

I will start looking at the Ultimate Boot CD as the possible next step. I don't think it is very likely at all that I will be able to find another second hand version of the JVC DR-MX10SEK so I will concentrate on trying to recover the contents via computer. By the way, from what I have read on other forums over the years, this JVC model had a problem with faulty capacitors and many users were experiencing the same never-ending booting problems as I was. It is possible that there were hard drive faults too, but I am hoping that in my case it was the capacitors and not the hard drive, but you never know.

I don't really know anything about how to clone a hard drive, so that is another handicap.
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  #9  
01-15-2015, 06:08 PM
mrmuy97 mrmuy97 is offline
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Can either or those XP hard drives be wiped and donated to the recovery effort, or do you want/need to retain whatever’s on them? If there is data you want to save, can it be copied and moved to another drive (e.g. the Acer’s)? If one or both are usable, can you check the size? There’s a chance, more so for the desktop, that there could be a 160GB or slightly larger HDD. If one of those drives happens to be large enough and has nothing on it that you want to save (or that you can move elsewhere ahead of time), you could attach the Seagate to that computer and run PartedMagic and PhotoRec with that computer’s internal drive as the recovery destination. Also keep in mind that if you end up being able to view more info about the partitions, you may be able to verify that only the 128GB partition contains your files, and therefore you only require 128GB or less of space for recovery.

If it doesn’t work out with the XP drives and you need to purchase another HDD whose only purpose would be for this project and wouldn’t be used by you continually for storage afterward, I’d go for a used but tested & working one on eBay for peanuts rather than a brand new drive. Actually if that were the case I could send you one as a rental if you return it afterward. If you want a drive to use often in the future for backup, extra space, etc, then a new one will be well worth the cost.

You’re probably right about the caps and what you read about that – poorly-manufactured caps have been and still are a much too common and widespread problem in electronics in my opinion. As far as the drive, the good news is that even if it’s got some bad sectors or other minor issues, your data is probably fine. In light of the caps likely being at fault though, hopefully you’re right and the Seagate is either fine or very close to it.

No need to worry about cloning until you reach that point, and if you decide to do it. It’s not complicated or difficult, it’s just critical to understand what you’re doing because a wrong selection can be very serious trouble.
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  #10  
08-21-2022, 01:04 PM
dmack dmack is offline
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hi there, I just wanted to add my partial success story for anyone still looking at this.

I removed the hard drive from my DR-MX10SEK and added it to a PC running ubuntu. Using DD i created an image on another drive which I later copied over to a windows machine.

Using ISO buster I was able to recover files using the "find missing files and folders" option. It found 463 files from my 160GB drive adding up to 149GB.

Using K lite codec pack i was able to view video but only a few minutes on each file with no fast foward. I'm not sure if other video software may yield better results at this point...
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