New sd card does not write

Othernet Hardware
41

Here’s what I got this time around. With the hard drive plugged into LH USB 2 port, it was not recognized by the LH. By that I mean using the LSUSB command with Putty, I did not see the hard drive, and the LH operated normally from its internal SD chip. When I used a powered hub, again thru the LH USB 2 port, the WiFi worked, Putty showed the hard drive connected, files loaded onto the hard drive, and I was able to set up the LH with the hard drive.

BUT - - the satellite receiver in the LH did not see any signal, and therefore the last LH pilot light kept blinking. In addition, when I unplugged the LH from its 12 volt supply with the hub still plugged into LH USB port 2, the LH remained powered up until I disconnected the hub. Ken

42

Did you try to tune in again or you left it as is? Can you send me the system and app log as usual to branko(at)outernet.is?

That’s interesting. I didn’t know you culd do that with LH honestly.

43

Also, can you tell me what make and model is your hard drive?

44

I couldn’t see anything obvious in the logs, but it’s possible that your hard drive has excessive power requirements, and that, on top of it, powered hub doesn’t play nice with LH. I’ll have to investigate that further.

45

After testing various storage devices with powered USB hub as well as attempting to connect various power-hungry devices to LH with and without the hub, we couldn’t reproduce tuner instability. My conclusion is that it’s probably something to do with that particular hard disk. I couldn’t find much info aout your disk based on vendor and model ID in the logs so it’s hard to say.

If any of the hardware guys here on the forum can lend a hand, it would be great.

46

OK - - I borrowed another hard drive from a friend and will go thru the process again. It is a Maxtor DiamondMax 20 160 GB SATA made by Seagate Technologies. I’ll let you know what happens. Ken

47

It is the same model as mine, but 120GB powered externally.
it works perfectly

48

branko to return to choose the language as I do?

49

Not sure I understand the question.

50

Finishing up on the hard drive issue. The Maxtor work perfectly!!

I think the key is the hard drive you use must be externally powered not thru the USB port as many portable units are. Then it must be plugged directly into the Lighthouse.

Sorry to create so many headaches, but I think we all learned something. Ken

51

currently, you can select content?
It takes up much space with content from around the world, Chinese, Danish, German, etc.

I need to select the language of the content, as in previous firmware.

52

That’s odd. I had one of those working on Lighthouse. Though, admittedly it was a development board. I’ll need to retest on the production unit.

53

I’ve been using USB-powered external hard drives in all of my tests. I have a 1TB i typically use, a WD Passport Ultra. Typically without a powered hub, but i did test that just recently and it worked fine.

54

Well, Ben, that is puzzling. I’m going to buy a new USB powered hard disk, and try it again. It is possible the unit I was using (even thou it works fine with my computers) had some sort of issue. I’ll report back soon. Ken

55

OK everybody!! A brand new 1 TB Western Digital Passport plugged into USB Port 2 on the Lighthouse running Version x.x.300 works fine. Files download and I can delete them individually or with the cleanup tool.

I can’t explain my other problems other than saying I was using older external storage devices. Ken

56

From the logs you sent me, it also appears the old unit had a weird partition layout.

57

For information I’m now using a Program Called Fat32 Formater from Softonic on my new 1 TB Western Digital Passport. It does a quick (or full taking a long time) FAT32 format, and I can chose an Allocation Unit Size from 512 to 65,536. I used the default of 32,768.

Prior to that, I either used MS Windows XP’s FAT32 format program. Perhaps that might explain what you are seeing, and all my past problems.

As a side note - - when I download a 32 GB version of WorldPossible’s Rachel to an external hard drive, WorldPossible advises to use the smallest Allocation Unit Size when formatting the hard drive because their files are numerous and small in size. Their files are similar to yours - - Project Gutenburg and Wikipedia among others. Is that relevant to Outernet files? Ken

58

From here:

In terms of space efficiency, smaller allocation unit sizes perform
better. The average space wasted per file will be half the chosen AUS.
So 4K wastes 2K per file and 64K wastes 32K. However, as Jonathon points
out, modern drives are massive and a little wasted space is not worth
fussing over and this shouldn’t be a determining factor (unless you are
on a small SSD).

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