LG HDD DVD recorder hard drive upgrade / clone

[grantza]

Anyone have any experience with upgrading the hard drive on these units.

A upgrade is a relatively simple procedure, however, I would like to keep what is on the existing drive & move it to the new drive.
With a simple upgrade, the unit will format the new drive.

I would like if possible to clone the existing drive onto a larger capacity drive. If a true clone is possible the recorder should not need to format the new drive (in theory i suppose).

My questions are:
what format is used on the hard drive on these recorders- fat, fat23 etc?
would the unit recognize a SATA drive using IDE to SATA converter plug (the original drive is IDE)
is there any recommended software to use for cloning (if possible)

any ideas

[howardb]

It's probably dependent on which recorder model you have - can you post that here?

I've done an HDD upgrad on my RH-1999H recorder - was a 250GB IDE standard and upgraded to 500GB IDE. Very simple swop process after cloning the drive using Acronis True Image/Disk Director.

I don't recall the file format used, but I backed up all the files on the old HDD to my PC by dragging the folders/files across in Explorer, then installed the new HDD in the LG, let it format, removed it and hooked back to the PC and dragged the folders/files back to the new drive.

Not sure about a SATA drive with a converter - don't see why not though...

[grantza]

it's a LH-RH3690SE
I am a little confused. You mention cloning with Acronis. You backed up the contents of the old drive to your pc, put the new drive into the recorder to let the recorder format it, then removed it to copy the content from the old drive (now on the pc) to the new drive.
At what point did you use Acronis?

If one simply made a clone of the old drive using Acronis do you think the recorder would want to format the new drive given it is a clone - although of higher capacity?

[chrisc4290]

You can still buy IDE hard discs. Just pop in a new one and it will initialise the drive in about 10 mins

[howardb]

it's a LH-RH3690SE
I am a little confused. You mention cloning with Acronis. You backed up the contents of the old drive to your pc, put the new drive into the recorder to let the recorder format it, then removed it to copy the content from the old drive (now on the pc) to the new drive.
At what point did you use Acronis?

Sorry, I should have mentioned the following:
- I used Acronis True Image to clone the drive (or rather make an image of the LG HDD) just in case it all went wrong - the first time doing this I was unsure whether I'd lose any content, so I made an HDD image as well as an HDD Backup (paranoid I know! ).
- I plugged in the LG HDD into my PC and dragged all folder strustures and files that were listed onto one of my spare HDDs using Explorer - so I effectively had 3 copies of all files...
- I took the new HDD and used Acronis Disk Director to partition and format, however, this could not be read when I plugged it back into the LG unit - so re-plugged the new HDD back into my PC and deleted the newly created partition, i.e. the HDD was now "blank".
- Then plugged the new HDD back into the LG unit and did a disk format - that way, the LG unit formats to it's specifications, creating the necessary partition and file format structure.
- Once done, popped the new drive back into my PC, and copied all the folders/files back to the new HDD, then popped it back in the LG unit - job done.

That's the full way I did it the first time, however, the second time I swopped the HDD, I just cloned the LG HDD partition to the new HDD, adjusted the partition size with Acronis Disk Director so all space was allocated and popped it back into the LG unit - this was because the HDDs were different capacities - no data lost.

If one simply made a clone of the old drive using Acronis do you think the recorder would want to format the new drive given it is a clone - although of higher capacity?

Once the new HDD is cloned, the LG unit should not format it - only the partition size would need to be adjusted, which you can do on you PC with Acronis.

[grantza]

thanks howardb

That was the exact info I was looking (the second time you did it) for, I suspected there may be an issue regards cloning & partition size.

[sChen77]

Hi howardb,

Would you be able to share how you managed to copy the files out of the LG's DVD recorder's HDD drive?

(1) What format does the HDD use? (eg. FAT32, NTFS, UDF, etc.)

(2) What is the folder structure that the files are stored in?

(3) And what file format type are the MPEG-2 encoded files stored in? (eg. VOB, VRO, MPG, etc.)

(4) Lastly, does the same apply to the newer LG dvd hdd recorders, like the RH388 and RH589? (I understand from an LG tech guy that the latest models use 2.5" SATA laptop drives vs. the older 3.5" IDE desktop drives.) (ref. http://www.askmelah.com/my-gadget-re...7h-review.html)


Thanks and best regards,
Stephen
Singapore

[johndoe1983]

I tried it a while back on a LG recorder I had - no luck though . This was about 4 years ago

[sChen77]

I tried it a while back on a LG recorder I had - no luck though . This was about 4 years ago

Are you referring to the process of upgrading / replacing the LG's HDD, or the process of extracting video off the LG's HDD?


Thanks,
Stephen
Singapore

[johndoe1983]

Replacing hdd with a bigger one

[sChen77]

Replacing hdd with a bigger one

Thanks for the clarification.

I guess you ended up buying a new LG DVD recorder?

[Terencek]

Thanks for the clarification.

I guess you ended up buying a new LG DVD recorder?

Unlikely -- DVD recorders are no longer on general sale in SA and neither are independent PVRs, reportedly after intervention by DSTV!