Peripherals Seagate Pipeline HD Hard Drive

[mmonster]

I was given a Seagate Pipeline HD 500GB hard drive by someone and it looks brand new and my understanding that these types of hard drives are used in set boxes such as sky and other video recording equipment. My question, can this be accessed via a PC as tried connecting it to my computers using both direct SATA connection and via a USB adapters and though the computers do recognize the hard drive its unable to either access or format it! Does this mean the hard drive is some how hardware locked?

 

[Abu Baniaz]

Have you gone into Computer Management, Disk Management and seen what it shows up as? You may need to delete existing partition and then create primary partition and set it active.

 

[little_pob]

As Abu hints at, Windows won't see the drive unless it's formatted in a file system it can read.

Just remember that hard disks designed for PVR tend not to have error checking. As such their use as backup or system critical (i.e. OS) storage should be avoided. For home use they are ideal as a PVR drive in an HTPC or STB, and for watching downloaded films - either streamed or attached via USB.

 

[trevortron]

As Abu hints at, Windows won't see the drive unless it's formatted in a file system it can read.

Just remember that hard disks designed for PVR tend not to have error checking. As such their use as backup or system critical (i.e. OS) storage should be avoided. For home use they are ideal as a PVR drive in an HTPC or STB, and for watching downloaded films - either streamed or attached via USB.

I didn't know there was a difference, very useful to know. I tend to strip HDD's out of scrap PVR's, now I know where not to use them! Can't say I've ever had any problems formatting them though. Then they end up on the pile of scrap that I keep rather than the pile of scrap that gets disposed of. Eventually.....