How to replace hard disk in Airtel Digital TV DTH DVR?

varkey said:

@Dj1018 The best bet would be to reach out to Airtel and ask what's the process for replacing the hard disk. They might have a standard operating procedure for these kind of issues.

Having said that, what was the size of the old HDD and what's the size of the new HDD? What partition scheme does it use? MBR or GPT?

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New and old size is same but as i said old hdd crashed so now way to find out format or allocation size

but have you tried contacting airtel customer care? what did they say?

Yup replace your stb its old

I googled there is no known solution, may be hdd is fine and problem is with STB

Its not cause hdd is making clicking sound even after its connected to pc.

Was expecting a positive reply from indian champion bloggers

Dj1018 said:

Thats the problem cant contact airtel

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Didn't understand this. Why can't you contact Airtel for help? Yes they will charge you for repair or replacement of the drive or even the entire STB but there's no getting around the fact that you will need their support.

device i fine signal is fine only hdd is faulty now that i have changed it i think i need the right format

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Bro that's what I am saying..the bootloader and its signature will be unique to the manufacturer of the STB. The drive itself may be formatted with standard file systems like NTFS/FAT32 or ExtFAT. But without the bootloader and signature the drive will not be recognized by the firmware. All STBs are proprietary systems it is not plug and play like replacing a drive in a USB enclosure.

PS - Also make sure the new HDD is the same capacity as the old one. There could be firmware limitations on recognizing larger hard disks.

weird. i got a notification where he said that he did contact airtel and they told him that he would need to buy a new dvr stb. i cannot find that message now.

nm. it's just above.

C3PO said:

Didn't understand this. Why can't you contact Airtel for help? Yes they will charge you for repair or replacement of the drive or even the entire STB but there's no getting around the fact that you will need their support.



Bro that's what I am saying..the bootloader and its signature will be unique to the manufacturer of the STB. The drive itself may be formatted with standard file systems like NTFS/FAT32 or ExtFAT. But without the bootloader and signature the drive will not be recognized by the firmware. All STBs are proprietary systems it is not plug and play like replacing a drive in a USB enclosure.

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Ok if thats so if i clone the hdd from one airtel stb to another new hdd will it work since its a cloned hdd

Ok if thats so if i clone the hdd from one airtel stb to another new hdd will it work since its a cloned hdd

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@Dj1018 if the drive is spinning up you could attempt to clone the drive. However, the PC may or may not recognize a proprietary signature and ask you to format the original drive. I would be careful. Do not partition the original drive with the PC specific MBR/GUID partition.