Difficulty mounting DirecTV DVR HDD

English Hardware
1

Hi, I have a 1 Terabyte Seagate Video 3.5 HDD which I removed from a DirecTV DVR recorder.

The goal I have is to mount this drive and take a look at the contents of the drive if possible in Dolphin.

Gateway-DX4850:~ # lsblk -o +FSTYPE
NAME                                  MAJ:MIN RM   SIZE RO TYPE  MOUNTPOINTS            FSTYPE
sda                                     8:0    0 931.5G  0 disk                         
├─sda1                                  8:1    0 517.7M  0 part                         swap
├─sda2                                  8:2    0    15G  0 part                         xfs
├─sda3                                  8:3    0 915.9G  0 part                         
└─sda4                                  8:4    0 133.4M  0 part                         
sdb                                     8:16   0 465.8G  0 disk                         
├─sdb1                                  8:17   0     8M  0 part                         
└─sdb2                                  8:18   0 465.8G  0 part                         crypto_LUKS
  └─cr_ata-ST3500418AS_9VMR840M-part2 254:0    0 465.7G  0 crypt                        LVM2_member
    ├─system-root                     254:1    0  62.7G  0 lvm   /boot/grub2/i386-pc    btrfs
    │                                                            /var                   
    │                                                            /root                  
    │                                                            /usr/local             
    │                                                            /srv                   
    │                                                            /boot/grub2/x86_64-efi 
    │                                                            /opt                   
    │                                                            /.snapshots            
    │                                                            /                      
    ├─system-swap                     254:2    0   7.6G  0 lvm   [SWAP]                 swap
    └─system-home                     254:3    0 395.4G  0 lvm   /home                  xfs
sdc                                     8:32   1     0B  0 disk                         
sdd                                     8:48   1     0B  0 disk                         
sde                                     8:64   1     0B  0 disk                         
sdf                                     8:80   1     0B  0 disk                         
sdg                                     8:96   1     0B  0 disk                         
sr0                                    11:0    1  1024M  0 rom

Gateway-DX4850:/mnt # mkdir Seagate-Video-1TB
Gateway-DX4850:/mnt # ls -lah 
total 0
dr-xr-xr-x. 1 root root  40 Jan  2 01:31 .
drwxr-xr-x. 1 root root 142 Sep 14 02:53 ..
drwxr-xr-x. 1 root root   0 Jan  2 01:31 Seagate-Video-1TB
drwxr-xr-x. 1 root root   6 Sep 14 02:49 var

Gateway-DX4850:/mnt # chown -R paul:paul /mnt/Seagate-Video-1TB
Gateway-DX4850:/mnt # ls -lah 
total 0
dr-xr-xr-x. 1 root root  40 Jan  2 01:31 .
drwxr-xr-x. 1 root root 142 Sep 14 02:53 ..
drwxr-xr-x. 1 paul paul   0 Jan  2 01:31 Seagate-Video-1TB
drwxr-xr-x. 1 root root   6 Sep 14 02:49 var

There is an error message when trying to mount manually:

Gateway-DX4850:/mnt # mount /sda/sda2 /mnt/Seagate-Video-1TB/
mount: /mnt/Seagate-Video-1TB: special device /sda/sda2 does not exist.
dmesg(1) may have more information after failed mount system call.

Some related dmesg output:

[ 2269.892047] [   T7344] XFS (sda2): Deprecated V4 format (crc=0) will not be supported after September 2030.
[ 2269.905256] [   T7344] XFS (sda2): Filesystem has a realtime volume, use rtdev=device option
[ 2269.905266] [   T7344] XFS (sda2): RT mount failed

Then I review an rtdev=device explanation excerpt:

-r realtime_section_options
These options specify the location, size, and other parameters of the real-time section of the filesystem. 
The valid realtime_section_options are: 
rtdev=device

Now I decide to ask for help with this. How to mount this drive?

2

sda2 appears to be a root (?) partition of the external drive. You need to find out how the DVR recorder formatted the drive and use the right mount parameters. Many recorders need a special disk layout and filesystem.

3

That is a correct observation. You probably mean to mount the xfs file system on /dev/sda2.

4

I tried this way now:

Gateway-DX4850:/mnt # mount /dev/sda2 /mnt/Seagate-Video-1TB/
mount: /mnt/Seagate-Video-1TB: unknown filesystem type 'xfs'.
       dmesg(1) may have more information after failed mount system call.

dmesg:

[   53.008359] [   T1168] NOTICE: Automounting of tracing to debugfs is deprecated and will be removed in 2030
[  673.822123] [   T8795] XFS (sda2): Deprecated V4 format (crc=0) will not be supported after September 2030.
[  673.822407] [   T8795] XFS (sda2): Filesystem has a realtime volume, use rtdev=device option
[  673.822413] [   T8795] XFS (sda2): RT mount failed

Interesting fdisk -l output:

Gateway-DX4850:/mnt # fdisk -l 
Disk /dev/sda: 931.51 GiB, 1000204886016 bytes, 1953525168 sectors
Disk model: ST1000VM002-1CT1
Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 4096 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 4096 bytes / 4096 bytes
Disklabel type: dos
Disk identifier: 0x00000000

Device     Boot      Start        End    Sectors   Size Id Type
/dev/sda1               64    1060289    1060226 517.7M 82 Linux swap / Solaris
/dev/sda2          1060296   32531624   31471329    15G 83 Linux
/dev/sda3         32531632 1953246959 1920715328 915.9G 83 Linux
/dev/sda4       1953246960 1953520064     273105 133.4M ab Darwin boot


Disk /dev/sdb: 465.76 GiB, 500107862016 bytes, 976773168 sectors
Disk model: ST3500418AS     
Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disklabel type: gpt
Disk identifier: 385C8821-53F1-4DC3-BABA-91E1009B26EA

Device     Start       End   Sectors   Size Type
/dev/sdb1   2048     18431     16384     8M BIOS boot
/dev/sdb2  18432 976773134 976754703 465.8G Linux LVM


Disk /dev/mapper/cr_ata-ST3500418AS_9VMR840M-part2: 465.74 GiB, 500081630720 bytes, 976721935 sectors
Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes


Disk /dev/mapper/system-swap: 7.61 GiB, 8174698496 bytes, 15966208 sectors
Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes


Disk /dev/mapper/system-root: 62.7 GiB, 67322773504 bytes, 131489792 sectors
Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes


Disk /dev/mapper/system-home: 395.42 GiB, 424581005312 bytes, 829259776 sectors
Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Gateway-DX4850:/mnt #

Darwin boot is on the drive…

I believe I have the mount parameters correct now at least?

-Great Hopes

5

As above: read the message and try to interpret it.

It apparently is detected as an xfs file system, but that does not seem to be supported on your system. I am not on Tumbleweed, thus I can not check this.

6

Besides the comments above…why do you try to mount sda2 btw? This partition does not contain the main data. It is on sda3.

7

The drive sdb on the machine contains a lv system-home which uses the xfs filesystem. So I thought that xfs is supported by the kernel.

8

I am not certain because my knowledge of mounting drives is not very good. If I pass# mount /dev/sda /mnt/Seagate-Video-1TB/ a bad superblock on /dev/sda message is given.

9

In fact “mounting drives” is only a (very sloppy) way of saying things. One mounts file systems. And one addresses those file system by the place (volume) where they are on. That “volume” can be a disk, a disk partition, a md (Linux Software RAID) device, a Logical Volume (from LVM), portion of the RAM, and more.
The majority of those volumes are made available as “device files” in /dev. Your mount statement should point to the device file where the file system you want to mount is to be found. You also tell what is the type of the file system (although in most cases the mount statement is able to detect that correctly when you forget to do that) and the directory wher you want to mount it (the “mount point”). Options can be added.

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10

When you understand the above, it will be clear that this will not work. Because /dev/sda has no file system (and thus no superblock in the correct place) directly on it (see the listings you provided). It has a partition table. And maybe one or more of those partitions have a file system on them.

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11

Another advise on how to best post such things on these forums: don’t tell, but show.
When you show that complete (prompt/command line, all output, next new prompt line) there isn’t then much more to type by you. We can all see what you saw en draw our conclusions.

12

Paul, IMHO and IME this is a pretty useless effort. The HDDs in these devices are intended not to be used in other devices. Then again, years ago I did manage to get the xfs data partition mounted from a Pioneer device’s HDD. Loads of video and audio files, none of them usable due to missing propretary codec. From a Philps device the HDD mounting was easypeasy, but the DATA folder contained 1 huge video/audio/subs container and a huge number of random numbered .abx, .bbx, .cbx, .dbx entensioned files. I got the files off of it, but the owner has never managed to actually see the content.
All this is by design.

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