Huawei DN370t youview fails to start, missing hard drive

pjwood52

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I recently bought a cheap second hand Huawei Youview box but it doesn't seem to work. At first inspection it would start on the wake-up screen and then go into the recovery console saying "System start up error". None of the recovery options worked.

I opened it up and there was no hard drive in it! I put in a spare 60GB hard drive I had and now it gets a little further then the waking up screen but it still can't start up and goes to the recovery screen with a "System start up error"

Is there anything special I need to do to the hard drive, or can anyone recommend any other potential fixes for the box?
 
Yep - send it back to the person you got it from and demand your money back if it was sold as working.

You need a much larger hard drive - 320Gb is the minimum spec for Youview and it is probably only having a 60Gb drive that is causing the error message. Youview sets aside 30Gb for "pushed" content (likely future development to enable people like BT to send files overnight as they did with their old Vision+ boxes)
 
Thanks for the reply. Unfortunately I bought it as spares/repair, mainly to harvest the hard drive out of it but the seller didn't mention that it wasn't in it, I probably should have asked. Not sure I can return it as the terms and conditions say the definition of spares/repair includes "missing parts"

I figured it might be the hard drive size so I managed to get the details of the 320GB HD that came out of it. I bought one but I'm having the same issues, any other ideas?
 
I have the Humax version but there should be a reformat option. I understand that Youview firmware is based on Linux so your drive may not be formatted properly - I believe you can get programs for Windows computers that enable you to do this.


Have you connected the box to the internet? Part of the startup sequence checks for program updates and installs these before progressing on to tune (this is not visible to the user).

You could ask Talktalk if there is a downloadable software update you can put on a USB stick and update that way (I am not sure if the USB sockets on any have been activated yet).
 
Final thought, how come this was on the market as surely it still belongs to TalkTalk? I understood their minimum rental period is a year or two and these boxes have only been available for a few months.

Given that, it is possible the box has been "bricked" by Talktalk to make it unusable or is on a blacklist of boxes denied access to the Youview servers.
 
Yeah I've tried the update from internet option, it downloads and installs an update fine, I know this as the version number listed in the recovery is updated. Unfortunately this still didn't work. When I put the drive in it was formatted to NTFS (Windows filesystem) now after the failed updates it just says device unreadable so I figure it is some custom filesystem that Huawei have and can't be read through windows. Might be worth trying to find out the exact format. I have tried all the options in the recovery mode, software/factory resets and firmware updates but nothing works.

I got it from eBay, there are loads of youview boxes on there. I guess it's just people signing up for Talk Talk but not wanting the box. I guess anythings possible but surely there would be a warning about using the box unauthorised rather than it just looping on the warm up?
 
Yeah I've tried the update from internet option, it downloads and installs an update fine, I know this as the version number listed in the recovery is updated. Unfortunately this still didn't work. When I put the drive in it was formatted to NTFS (Windows filesystem) now after the failed updates it just says device unreadable so I figure it is some custom filesystem that Huawei have and can't be read through windows. Might be worth trying to find out the exact format. I have tried all the options in the recovery mode, software/factory resets and firmware updates but nothing works.

I got it from eBay, there are loads of youview boxes on there. I guess it's just people signing up for Talk Talk but not wanting the box. I guess anythings possible but surely there would be a warning about using the box unauthorised rather than it just looping on the warm up?

It's not a specific Talktalk file format, is should be a standard Linux one rather than NTFS. It's most likely the format of the hard drive that's causing the problem now.
 
It's not a specific Talktalk file format, is should be a standard Linux one rather than NTFS. It's most likely the format of the hard drive that's causing the problem now.

I just tried formatting it to ext4 and same problem. Again though when I plug the hard drive into my laptop after it runs the update from Internet it's shown as unknown rather than ext4 so it looks like it's formatting it to something other than NTFS/FAT/EXTn.

Looks like I might be at the end of the line. Thanks for all of your help. If you can think of anything else to try please let me know and I'll give it a go

edit:
Ok so I put it into my linux machine running ubuntu and it tells me its formatted to XFS. Whats more is that it has 2 volumes on, one with space of about 30GB which measures up with what the wiki says about "320 GB or 500GB hard disk drive (30 GB reserved for pushed content)". SO it looks like it does do the format when performing a delete recordings update.

looks like it's some other fault then...
 
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Try reformatting to EXT3 which I understand is the file system the Humax box uses. (Since they all use Linux, I assume the Huawei is the same)
 
tried EXT3, same problem again. No idea what to do with it now

Have you asked yourself why anyone would take a working, nearly new PVR, remove the 320 GB HDD which is worth little at today's prices, then sell the rest for spares at a greatly reduced price compared with a second hand working unit?

The obvious answer is that they knew the PVR was broken, kept the disk as the only part with any use, and sold the rest for a few pounds to get rid of it.

The alternative answer mentioned by someone else (no idea if it is true) is that these boxes are designed to be unusable unless you have Talktalk broadband. Either way you wasted your money twice - once for the PVR, then for another HDD.
 
Have you asked yourself why anyone would take a working, nearly new PVR, remove the 320 GB HDD which is worth little at today's prices, then sell the rest for spares at a greatly reduced price compared with a second hand working unit?

The obvious answer is that they knew the PVR was broken, kept the disk as the only part with any use, and sold the rest for a few pounds to get rid of it.

The alternative answer mentioned by someone else (no idea if it is true) is that these boxes are designed to be unusable unless you have Talktalk broadband. Either way you wasted your money twice - once for the PVR, then for another HDD.

Did you ask yourself if it was gonna be helpful to make a post and just state the obvious and be condescending whilst you were at it?

The obvious answer is no, why bother replying to a post that's asking for help if you're not going to offer any?

Oh and Hard drives have more uses then a broken PVR, so saying I've wasted my money twice is a bit short sighted of you. Thanks though :rolleyes:
 
tried EXT3, same problem again. No idea what to do with it now
I stand corrected, apparently you were aware that it is useless.

In that case what to do with it now should also have been obvious - try to get rid of it the way it came, via Ebay. Of course there may not be any other buyers for scrap so the next option is the local recycling centre. :D
 
Gentlemen. Please treat each other with appropriate respect - Thank you.
 
Hi. I recently purchased one of these boxes without a hdd. I fitted a 300gb into it but had no success with it. I then bought a working box and swapped the hdd from that into the "broken" box. After it downloaded some update it worked fine. I plugged this drive into windows and it showed up as 4 volumes but could not be read. I'm assuming any new drive has to be formatted correctly so that the box can use it.
 
That's interesting, thanks for the info! Any chance of hooking it up to a linux install and seeing what formats/sizes each volume is? Or could you tell how big each volume was through windows?
 
I unplugged the hard drive once and noticed it had 3 partitions, one of them encrypted (if my memory serves me well).

If you have a drive with the same size, i can create a "dd" image of the three partitions and pass them on to you to restore on an empty drive.

M.
 
Hi Maxmacs, that would be awesome. I have a 320GB which i believe is the same make/model as the one it ships with so would really appreciate the image if you can do that?
 
maxmacs could you send me the "dd" image of the three partitions if you could i really would appreciate it thanks
 
Has anyone managed to successfully change/upgrade the hard drive in one of these Huawei Youview boxes? I've just picked up a 320GB version off ebay and would like to upgrade with a spare 750GB laptop drive - is it likely to work if I just change the hard drive or would I need to duplicate the old drive (and then extend one of the partitions I guess)?
 
Has anyone managed to successfully change/upgrade the hard drive in one of these Huawei Youview boxes? I've just picked up a 320GB version off ebay and would like to upgrade with a spare 750GB laptop drive - is it likely to work if I just change the hard drive or would I need to duplicate the old drive (and then extend one of the partitions I guess)?

I've not heard of anybody doing it yet. I picked one up myself to have a go with but have not got round to opening it up yet! I suspect you will need to go with an expanded clone.
 
Some of you may have come across my post about the TT YouView box and the information about its hard drive.

I have not touched the YouView box untill tonight. I opened it up once again, Fiddled with my 160GB HDD and dropped it into the box, after an hour of trial an error (What else is thier to do at 4am?), I would like to present to you the attached attachment.

Any questions?
 

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Congrats :) I give up on mine for a bit, I was waiting for the image from samuel1992 but it never came. What did you do to get it working?
 

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