Old DVR drive (PUIS)

JonathanLee

Yeah I finally got my old DVR hard drive to work with anything.

Why do this you ask..

https://montavue.com/blogs/news/surveillance-grade-hard-drives-vs-desktop-hard-drives

First disable PUIS mode with a Raspberry PI and a SATA usb adapter.

Install HDPARM run hdparm -s0 on the drive

sudo hdparm -s0 /dev/sda

Install sg3-utils and manually spin up the drive.

sudo sg_sat_set_features --feature=7 /dev/sda

Second install that drive into a USB enclosure and it will spin up, format it and now you got a heavyweight storage system built to run 24/7

Side Note: Normally a DVR HDD doesn't work with anything but the system they are installing into. That's because PUIS is enabled and hard set in the drives software you have to have the ability to turn that off with the jumpers or the drive's pcb software.

I have been testing and working on this for a while off and on, the DVR could power it up and I could swap the data cable and see the drive that way but.. it wouldn't even spin up without the DVR until now.

They wanted me to throw that old DVR out... It had monster heavy duty drive in it. Thank you.

https://datarecovery.com/rd/how-to-unlock-dvr-hard-drives-for-normal-use-directv-dish-network/

JonathanLee

Make sure you fully format it before use.

JonathanLee

mvikman

Even if it came from a DVR, the drive is still a basic desktop HDD, old WD Caviar SE series is basically the current WD Blue series.
Also I personally wouldn't re-purpose any aged spinning drive as a storage drive, especially if it may have been used on a NAS or a server running 24/7. I have seen too many NAS/Surveillance labeled drives suddenly die after they've been powered off after years of continuous spinning.

JonathanLee

Dish Network DVRs had custom firmware for them. I thought it would just plug in and work.. Nope it wont spin up at all until you fix the PUIS flags. I think it was more of a computer science puzzle for me to learn about working with PUIS.

JonathanLee

@mvikman they got some new ones that are the gold series 20TB unreal, I had a 10MB HDD in 1990

JonathanLee

I couldn't just throw it out... Again my wife says I am an electronic hoarder.

It works great for a USB drive this thing won't die it's a Western Digital. The sound of it spinning up is so satisfying. I use to have 10K rpm drives back in the day, the spin sound is relaxing. I have a microHDD also it's a compact flash HDD, the coolest USB drive because it also makes spin up sounds just really micro.

!

I can't even figure out what to put on 350GB to fill it up, let alone their new 20TBs.