Replace Gateway internal hard drive

[#1]

Wondering if anyone has replaced the internal hard drive on their Gateway XG1, if they could share the procedure for doing so? Some questions I have are:

- Is it pata or sata?

- Form factor: 2.5" or 3.5"

- Filesystem: NTFS, ext3, ext4, etc...

- Partitioning?

- Does the internal drive contain only encrypted recordings or does it have system files as well?

- Can you copy the content from old drive to new drive? Can you connect the old drive to a pc (Linux or Windows) and see the files so you can copy them?

[#2]

I can answer some of them...  I have thought about it but haven't done it yet...

SATA

2.5"

Partitioning..  Yes, there will be a few partitions..  The external drive I cloned and was using ext4 (from memory, I lost my notes)

I copied the content from an external drive to a new drive, and that worked.

Honestly, what I would start with, is just swapping the internal drive, see if it will rebuild the file system on it's own.

Make sure you use an AV rated drive..  One that is designed for 50% read 50% write and 100% duty cycle..  WD Purple drives are great but I don't remember if the Purple drives come in 2.5..  AV drives do exist in 2.5, just have to find them.

[#3]

I guess I should ask why?  If you want more space, it is simple to add an external drive.  If it is having problems, Shaw will usually fix it for free.

[#4]

red90 wrote:

I guess I should ask why?  If you want more space, it is simple to add an external drive.  If it is having problems, Shaw will usually fix it for free.

Only within the 3 year warranty..

An internal drive would be a LOT easier than adding an external drive, plus, you could still add an external drive afterwards

[#5]

I finally opened up the Gateway to see what's inside. Took a bit of effort to get the case open without gouging the plastic .(Arris definitely designed it to prevent people from going in easily.)  Anyway, the internal hard drive is a 2.5" WD5000LUCT. I took it out and tried to mount it on my Linux box, but the whole drive shows up as Unallocated space; I'm not even able to see any partitions. I'm guessing this means the entire drive is encrypted.

Then I attached an old 500GB 3.5" drive I had lying around to see what would happen (I didn't want to buy a 2.5" drive until I knew this was going to work.) As I didn't know what filesystem it uses, I prepped the drive by deleting all existing partitions first. Well, the result is: nothing!  I waited about 5min, but it didn't ask me to format the drive. I got no Guide data, can't watch Live TV, but the status screen does say the Lan is connected. In fact, unless the drive is super quiet, I can't even hear/feel it spinning up. Good news is I was able to put the original 2.5" drive back in and everything worked as normal.  So my goal of increasing the internal HD capacity remains elusive.

[#6]

It is very possible that the hard drive power cable inside only provides 5 volts for the 2.5" drive and not the 12 volts that a 3.5" drive will need as well.

Try running binwalk on the drive or a similar tool.  From memory (and I can not find my bloody notes right now) the Gateway has an odd partition table, drive starts at 2048 rather than at 0.

If I can find my notes I can give you a better answer.  I can not remember where I saved them.

[tzs]

I am having issues with my Gateway, and likely the external HDD I have connected as well.  I've pulled the external HDD and connected it to a PC running Linux Mint, but I am unable to view anything on the partition.  What program(s) did you use to access the drive partition to copy the recording files to a replacement drive?  Any help would be greatly appreciated.

[#8]

In my experience they will repair forever and not just within the three years.

[#9]

loop, mount, cp

I still haven't found my notes on it..  I may have erased them...  ;( Argh

The partition started at a 2048 offset (from memory) I think, otherwise the partition table was at 2048, something odd like that, 2048 was important to the entire process, that I remember for sure..  haha

[#10]

The 2048 significance probably means it's an Advanced Format drive with 4096-byte physical sector size. These drives are usually partitioned with the first partition starting at the 1MiB boundary (2048 sector offset).