Recording from FTA Sat. receivers to hard drives

Carl Rawson · 20-11-2009, 3:32 PM

I have 2 Fortecstar Innovations and a FS4400.
All of which say that they can record to external hard drives. I have the latest updates from their website on my machines but cannot get them to record with Seagate 1TB external hard drives. The FS4400 just keeps turning on and off continually and the Innovations give a response "Device not ready or not FAT32". They will let me format them though.
Can anyone shed any light on this problem?
Also, my next idea would be to use pci cafrd much like the Hauppauge Freeview card and record to my p.c.'s hard drive like I once did with Freeview. Is there a card out there for Satellite?
Thanks for reading!

grahamlthompson · 20-11-2009, 4:13 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Carl Rawson

I have 2 Fortecstar Innovations and a FS4400.
All of which say that they can record to external hard drives. I have the latest updates from their website on my machines but cannot get them to record with Seagate 1TB external hard drives. The FS4400 just keeps turning on and off continually and the Innovations give a response "Device not ready or not FAT32". They will let me format them though.
Can anyone shed any light on this problem?
Also, my next idea would be to use pci cafrd much like the Hauppauge Freeview card and record to my p.c.'s hard drive like I once did with Freeview. Is there a card out there for Satellite?
Thanks for reading!

Just google dvb-S2 card

Carl Rawson · 10-12-2009, 3:28 PM

... if anyone's bothered or has been having the same problem.
My problem was that the Fortec's don't recognise any hard drive larger than 500GB. I purchased 1TB on the advice of the shop assistant in Maplin's and was told to get the latest update so that they could be recognised. Thanks to this site I find out that 500GB was the biggest.
You will need a p.c. to do this and a little knowledge; yet if I can do it then anyone can

.
I got some free partitioning software off the web and made a ( and please forgive me if I get it wrong here ) a 512Giga Bit or Byte partition formatted with FAT32. I know that there's a difference between a Bit and a Byte but I'm not sure what. I do know that 512 of one gives you just shy of 500 of the other.
Imediately both the Innovations and the FS4400 recognised them. Hoorar!

Not quite!

Modern hard drives come preinstalled with the sleep function enabled. This kept making the Fortec's restart and losing their programs. After trawling the Seagate website ( They don't make it easy either ) I found 'Segate Manager'. That's the program that can turn the sleep function off and so long as the Fortec's are on so is the drive and so no interuptions as the drive 'wakes up'.
Took me a while but I got there.
The Innovations work fine with this and give you the full 500GB of space that you partitioned. The FS4400 for some reason will allow you to turn off the 'Timeshift' function but still amazingly allocates around 20% of the drive space over to it....use it or not!
Also, of course I have a 1TB drive and can only use half it. May be Fortec will get their act together at some point though. I've tried to contact them but they're not interested. Questionable customer service me thinks.
Anyway, anyone else with the same problem let me know via a personal email and i'll get back to you with my findings as soon as, but please give me time as there are days when I don't get to the web

TonyA · 10-12-2009, 3:37 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Carl Rawson

... if anyone's bothered or has been having the same problem.
My problem was that the Fortec's don't recognise any hard drive larger than 500GB. I purchased 1TB on the advice of the shop assistant in Maplin's and was told to get the latest update so that they could be recognised. Thanks to this site I find out that 500GB was the biggest.
You will need a p.c. to do this and a little knowledge; yet if I can do it then anyone can

.
I got some free partitioning software off the web and made a ( and please forgive me if I get it wrong here ) a 512Giga Bit or Byte partition formatted with FAT32. I know that there's a difference between a Bit and a Byte but I'm not sure what. I do know that 512 of one gives you just shy of 500 of the other.
Imediately both the Innovations and the FS4400 recognised them. Hoorar!

Not quite!

Modern hard drives come preinstalled with the sleep function enabled. This kept making the Fortec's restart and losing their programs. After trawling the Seagate website ( They don't make it easy either ) I found 'Segate Manager'. That's the program that can turn the sleep function off and so long as the Fortec's are on so is the drive and so no interuptions as the drive 'wakes up'.
Took me a while but I got there.
The Innovations work fine with this and give you the full 500GB of space that you partitioned. The FS4400 for some reason will allow you to turn off the 'Timeshift' function but still amazingly allocates around 20% of the drive space over to it....use it or not!
Also, of course I have a 1TB drive and can only use half it. May be Fortec will get their act together at some point though. I've tried to contact them but they're not interested. Questionable customer service me thinks.
Anyway, anyone else with the same problem let me know via a personal email and i'll get back to you with my findings as soon as, but please give me time as there are days when I don't get to the web

Mmmmmm just a thought.... if you were to partition the drive into 2 x 500Gb (FAT32) chunks, I wonder if the Fortec would see it as 2 drives??? That way you wouldn't be wasting half the drive! Might be worth having a go just out of curiosity more than anything, if it doesn't work you could re-format it back as it was!

Carl Rawson · 10-12-2009, 3:42 PM

Hmm?
I'm just about to leave the web but I like your thinking.
How would I do that? What key words might I be looking for in the partitioning software?
At the minute I have I have one set as 'primary' ... I think and the other half 'innactive'...
hmmm?
Leave it with me.... I'll copy the programs I recorded to my 2TB and have a play....no doubt I'll cock it up somewhere and end up formatting the drive

TonyA · 10-12-2009, 3:46 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Carl Rawson

Hmm?
I'm just about to leave the web but I like your thinking.
How would I do that? What key words might I be looking for in the partitioning software?
At the minute I have I have one set as 'primary' ... I think and the other half 'innactive'...
hmmm?
Leave it with me.... I'll copy the programs I recorded to my 2TB and have a play....no doubt I'll cock it up somewhere and end up formatting the drive

Just noticed that someone managed to get a 750GB Seagate drive to work with their one - going through the same motions might get yours to see the full 1TB! Have a look for the "Sideband" users' 2nd entry on this page:Fortec Star Innovation - Freesat - Digital Spy Forums

**logiciel** · 11-12-2009, 12:02 AM

When you formatted the one 500+gB partition you might just as well have used the rest of the capacity with another 500+gB partition, and I suppose there's a chance that the Fortec would recognise them both.
There are 8 bits to a byte, but you very rarely see bits mentioned!

TonyA · 11-12-2009, 12:12 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by logiciel

When you formatted the one 500+gB partition you might just as well have used the rest of the capacity with another 500+gB partition, and I suppose there's a chance that the Fortec would recognise them both.
There are 8 bytes to a bit, but you very rarely see bytes mentioned!

Sorry to correct you, but there are 8 "bits" to a "byte".

grahamlthompson · 11-12-2009, 9:42 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by TonyA

Sorry to correct you, but there are 8 "bits" to a "byte".

Clearly the byter got bit

But yes 4 bits to a nibble, 8 bits to a byte and 16 bits to a word (two bytes)

TonyA · 11-12-2009, 11:32 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by grahamlthompson

Clearly the byter got bit

But yes 4 bits to a nibble, 8 bits to a byte and 16 bits to a word (two bytes)

LOL! Yes indeed, the terminology of "nibble" and "word" has almost disappeared these days, when everyone is talking about gigabytes and terabytes of storage. Amazing to think we can now get 128 gigabyte pen-drives, when about 20 years ago we were using 300 megabyte exchangeable disk drives the size of washing machines, in computer rooms!

Ahhhh nostalgia.... is it true it's a thing of the past?

**logiciel** · 11-12-2009, 2:58 PM

Thanks guys - right after logging off I realised I'd done it the wrong way around but it was late so I didn't bother to come back and correct it - true!

Thanks also for that about the nibble - I thought of that too but couldn't remember if it was 2 or 4 bits each.
Anyone for a home "computer" with a total of 32,768 bytes memory, including the OS?
Amazing what you could do with them!

TonyA · 11-12-2009, 3:11 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by logiciel

Thanks guys - right after logging off I realised I'd done it the wrong way around but it was late so I didn't bother to come back and correct it - true!

Thanks also for that about the nibble - I thought of that too but couldn't remember if it was 2 or 4 bits each.
Anyone for a home "computer" with a total of 32,768 bytes memory, including the OS?
Amazing what you could do with them!

I had one of those late-night posting errors on another post too, so I know where you're coming from! LOL!

Oh yes, fully text based "Adventure" games in just a few Kilobytes of code. Amazing what some of those programmers used to do with so little resources back in the day! The fact is though, some of those games were just a sheer joy to play, unlike some of the in-your-face graphic laden fodder that's served up these days!

Ooops going a bit off topic there!

Apologies!

grahamlthompson · 11-12-2009, 4:42 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by TonyA

LOL! Yes indeed, the terminology of "nibble" and "word" has almost disappeared these days, when everyone is talking about gigabytes and terabytes of storage. Amazing to think we can now get 128 gigabyte pen-drives, when about 20 years ago we were using 300 megabyte exchangeable disk drives the size of washing machines, in computer rooms!

Ahhhh nostalgia.... is it true it's a thing of the past?

16K of extra memory cost me £100.00 for TRS80 about 40 years ago. Mind you it doubled the memory to a gargantuan 32K

Fred Smith · 11-12-2009, 5:00 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Carl Rawson

... if anyone's bothered or has been having the same problem.
My problem was that the Fortec's don't recognise any hard drive larger than 500GB. I purchased 1TB on the advice of the shop assistant in Maplin's and was told to get the latest update so that they could be recognised. Thanks to this site I find out that 500GB was the biggest.
You will need a p.c. to do this and a little knowledge; yet if I can do it then anyone can

.
I got some free partitioning software off the web and made a ( and please forgive me if I get it wrong here ) a 512Giga Bit or Byte partition formatted with FAT32. I know that there's a difference between a Bit and a Byte but I'm not sure what. I do know that 512 of one gives you just shy of 500 of the other.
Imediately both the Innovations and the FS4400 recognised them. Hoorar!

Not quite!

Modern hard drives come preinstalled with the sleep function enabled. This kept making the Fortec's restart and losing their programs. After trawling the Seagate website ( They don't make it easy either ) I found 'Segate Manager'. That's the program that can turn the sleep function off and so long as the Fortec's are on so is the drive and so no interuptions as the drive 'wakes up'.
Took me a while but I got there.
The Innovations work fine with this and give you the full 500GB of space that you partitioned. The FS4400 for some reason will allow you to turn off the 'Timeshift' function but still amazingly allocates around 20% of the drive space over to it....use it or not!
Also, of course I have a 1TB drive and can only use half it. May be Fortec will get their act together at some point though. I've tried to contact them but they're not interested. Questionable customer service me thinks.
Anyway, anyone else with the same problem let me know via a personal email and i'll get back to you with my findings as soon as, but please give me time as there are days when I don't get to the web

This was covered briefly before:

Fortec Star Passion and Innovation now support Freesat EPG?

If FS won't communicate, can't see where this is going?

**logiciel** · 11-12-2009, 8:04 PM

Thanks Tony - that makes me feel better.

And to both yes, the restriction to a minute amount of memory made both the programming and the result worth it.

Carl Rawson · 16-12-2009, 3:43 PM

Thanks Guys! Interesting stuff. It didn't like the idea of 2 drives I'm afraid (refers to the FS4400).
Fortec got back to me only to ask exactly the same question they'd asked before. Namely what drive was it? To which I told them that I'd told them.....TWICE!
Anyway I'll back up the 1TB to another drive and try to reformat to the full 1TB. After all it can't hurt. It may have been the 'Power Management' function all along interfering. That said it'll still only be about 800 GB due to the fact that regardless as to whether the 'Timeshift' function is on or not it still allocates 20% to this function ( refers FS4400 again ) and i've told Fortec about this too.
I'll keep on.
Thanks for all the posts!

Carl Rawson · 18-12-2009, 1:58 PM

...well nearly.
I tried to remove the partition but then the software I was using ( not Windows ) but Easeus (?) wouldn't let me make the unpartitioned hard drive as 'Primary' only 'Logical'. The FS4400 doesn't like this.
I did partition the drive to 926ish GB and allocated this partition as 'Primary' and have had no problems.
I haven't been able to check this with the Innovations as they're in the UK and I won't be back there 'till early Jan, but I will.
As for the FS4400 then it's working O.K. at this size now as above, but annoyingly even though the 'Timeshift' function is disabled the allocation to this feature has now risen to 180GB!

As for Fortec Star themselves....don't waste your time. They're a waste of it.

Carl Rawson · 30-12-2009, 4:14 PM

Just to say that I have sorted the problem out now.
You must have a partition ( for some reason ) and it must be set to 'active' and be formatted with FAT32.
As per one previous post I'll let you know whether it 'plays up' once it gets to about 80% full.
Now, wouldn't it be nice for Fortecstar to add in more functionalities like for eg. using the pause button to cut out adverts on none timer recordings?