Lorex 2nd HD DIY

[Optical Carrier]

Based on this thread from 2021 -here- I thought I should be able to save a bit of $ and buy my own 16TB HD (I got a WD gold). The N882A6 I have came with a 2TB and a space for an extra drive so I popped the 16TB WD Gold in and powered everything back up. The NVR sees it but I cannot format it neither from the console with a HDMI monitor and mouse nor can I format it from the windows app.

The windows app shows it "normal" but with 0 gig of free space and 0 gig of total space


Trying to format it here immediately fails without any error message or anything, it just brings you right back to that scree I pasted above.

From the console though the status shows aserror and shows 0 mb of free space and 0mb of total space. Trying to format it from the console though, immediately gives "Operation Failed"

I guess I spent a ton of $ on this drive for nothing? Maybe a firmware update would help? Its been a few years since I updated firmware.
Heck if itll work by removing the original 2TB (which not only isnt a WD purple drive, its not even a WD drive) and just using the 16TB drive by itself w/o the orig 2TB at all, that would be a win at this point.

Or maybe is it possible to flash to a Dahua, would that be possible and would Dahua support that drive?
Any help appreciated!

 

[Oldtechguy66]

IIRC, that series NVR will support up to 20TB, BUT ONLY as TWO 10TB drives, 10 TB max individual drive size. I've not tried it, but you may be able to partition the drive (on a computer) to 10TB so the NVR will recognize. Of course, then you throw away the other 6TB, but that's all I know to try. I doubt any firmware hack will change the limit, as the hardware must be able to address and ID a drive larger than 10TB. Could be wrong about that, never tried it. It would probably be best to remove the old non surveillance 2TB drive for other reasons - but it won't allow your 16TB drive to work. Lorex (& most NVRs I'm aware of) use Linux based OS.. Lorex will expect the drive in a *nix format (ext4, etc), not Windows type partitions.. at least that's my experience. I check/test/format NVR drives on my Linux machines before loading them in NVRs. I have an external HD docking station on a Linux PC, so I can plug in a surveillance drive to test, repartition/format, or just file dump or copy.. handy and quick. If the new drive fails check/partition functions on a PC (must have app that will R&W non WIN partitions), then the drive is likely bad. Any Win based drive utility capable of reading Linux partitions should work, or use a Linux machine to test the drive.

 

[mat200]

Based on this thread from 2021 -here- I thought I should be able to save a bit of $ and buy my own 16TB HD (I got a WD gold). The N882A6 I have came with a 2TB and a space for an extra drive so I popped the 16TB WD Gold in and powered everything back up. The NVR sees it but I cannot format it neither from the console with a HDMI monitor and mouse nor can I format it from the windows app.

The windows app shows it "normal" but with 0 gig of free space and 0 gig of total space
View attachment 189603

Trying to format it here immediately fails without any error message or anything, it just brings you right back to that scree I pasted above.

From the console though the status shows aserror and shows 0 mb of free space and 0mb of total space. Trying to format it from the console though, immediately gives "Operation Failed"

I guess I spent a ton of $ on this drive for nothing? Maybe a firmware update would help? Its been a few years since I updated firmware.
Heck if itll work by removing the original 2TB (which not only isnt a WD purple drive, its not even a WD drive) and just using the 16TB drive by itself w/o the orig 2TB at all, that would be a win at this point.

Or maybe is it possible to flash to a Dahua, would that be possible and would Dahua support that drive?
Any help appreciated!

Thanks @Optical Carrier

" .. 16TB WD Gold in and powered everything back up. The NVR sees it but I cannot format it neither from the console with a HDMI monitor and mouse nor can I format it from the windows app."

interesting .. I have only used smaller HDDs ..

whom did you get the NVR from ?

I'd drop them a line and see what sort of answer we get.

Also .. ask if they have newer firmware that addresses this issue.

 

[Oldtechguy66]

My experience with Lorex NVRs is many will only quick format the drive - they will not initialize it or long format it. I've had to do it on a PC before in order to get the drive to work correctly on some Lorex NVRs. I've had brand new WD Purple drives start up, work fine for a period, then go wacky mode on certain Lorex NVRs. Pulled the drive, reinitialized/formatted on a PC, and then it worked fine. Got a 2TB WD purple on the Linux box I'm using right now that has worked flawlessly for years.. but repeatedly failed in a Lorex NVR. Passed all the drive tests on a PC but failed in the NVR with write errors. Why? No clue. It's Lorex. Like a box of chocolates. Never know....but ALL firmware on ALL the machines I've run across is, at best, quirky. Functional but not entirely self-consistent. I had one NVR Lorex sent me that worked for a week, then repeatedly locked up. HD file corruption. Why? Overheating. The NVR fan was MIA. Spent 2 hrs on phone to Lorex tech in Columbia SA. They wouldn't believe me until I sent them pictures of the NVR board, with MIA fan. To their credit, they did immediately send a new machine and PP return label for the old machine. That type problem has been very rare, but quirks are very common.
Lorex seldomly releases new firmware, especially once a product is 6-12 months old. After that, it's very infrequent to never. I don't know if Dahua writes firmware for Lorex, or just provides them the generic code and lets Lorex "engineers" customize the code... but updates are generally very few and far between, if the happen at all. Don't assume Lorex has an identical product in the Dahua line.. it may, but more likely it's a modified version with slightly different (deprecated) specs and hardware. Might be able to flash it and make it think it's full Dahua, and you may end up with a nice large aluminum brick. Haven't tried it, don't have time or inclination - sorry, can't help in that regard. All my future Dahua product pruchases will be from Andy @ EmpireTech... Lorex was OK for what I needed at the time, but moving on to better things.

 

[looktall]

Have you tried adding the new drive to the NVR without the old one?
Have you plugged the new drive into a computer to see if it actually works?

 

[Optical Carrier]

I got the NVR directly from Lorex. Ill call them tomorrow also.

I've worked with linux since the early 2000s I have a sabrent sata caddy I can stick the new drive in and use on a linux pc I have to create partitions on. Just straight ext4 type? and should I create a partition with exactly 10TB in size?

But why should I just toss the old drive out, the quality of it? Can I call lorex since I got it directly from them and ask for a better quality drive? Were they not supposed to use that one?

Thanks for the tips everyone Ill work on it all this afternoon!

 

[wittaj]

Good luck on the call to Lorex - I suspect you know more than the agent you will talk to and will come back saying that is an hour of your life you won't get back LOL.

They are not required to provide a "quality" drive, simply a HDD as this is a consumer brand system. As long as it survives the warranty period, that is all they care about. And many use non-surveillance rated HDDs all the time with no issue.

The reason for taking out the original HDD is to see if using two drives is somehow causing the issue. Just have one in there and put the new drive on the old drive connection and see if it recognizes and allows you to use the drive. If so, then try connecting the existing drive to the spare connector and see if it recognizes it.

That is why "real" NVRs do not come with a HDD so that the customer can decide on the drive.

 

[mat200]

I got the NVR directly from Lorex. Ill call them tomorrow also.

I've worked with linux since the early 2000s I have a sabrent sata caddy I can stick the new drive in and use on a linux pc I have to create partitions on. Just straight ext4 type? and should I create a partition with exactly 10TB in size?

But why should I just toss the old drive out, the quality of it? Can I call lorex since I got it directly from them and ask for a better quality drive? Were they not supposed to use that one?

Thanks for the tips everyone Ill work on it all this afternoon!

FYI - seen reports, that Lorex does have some good techs .. takes some luck to reach one. Most are just lower knowledge employees following scripts. So plan a strategy to try to get to a good tech when you call ..

 

[Optical Carrier]

First Ill say I always do a graceful shutdown using the NVRs console with HDMI & mouse.

OK I've put the 16TB in the NVR by itself using the original power/data cables from the original drive. It boots up with a drive error and still from the console I get operation failed when trying to format it.

Heres the weird thing though, I loaded up that original 3TB drive on the sata/usb3 caddy on my linux system just fine, but there doesnt seem to be any partitions on it, using both fdisk and parted tools:

FDISK:
Disk /dev/sda: 2.73 TiB, 3000592982016 bytes, 732566646 sectors
Disk model:
Units: sectors of 1 * 4096 = 4096 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 4096 bytes / 4096 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 32768 bytes / 32768 bytes
Disklabel type: dos
Disk identifier: 0x244a4236

PARTED:
(parted) print
Error: /dev/sda: unrecognised disk label
Model: SABRENT (scsi)
Disk /dev/sda: 3001GB
Sector size (logical/physical): 4096B/4096B
Partition Table: unknown
Disk Flags:

And weirder still, although the 16TB drive pops up just fine in dmesg when its plugged into a USB3 port:
[15320283.175049] usb 2-8: USB disconnect, device number 2
[15320283.176321] sd 5:0:0:0: [sdb] Synchronizing SCSI cache
[15320283.439060] sd 5:0:0:0: [sdb] Synchronize Cache(10) failed: Result: hostbyte=DID_ERROR driverbyte=DRIVER_OK
[15320305.619173] usb 2-8: new SuperSpeed USB device number 3 using xhci_hcd
[15320305.640245] usb 2-8: New USB device found, idVendor=152d, idProduct=1561, bcdDevice= 1.04
[15320305.640259] usb 2-8: New USB device strings: Mfr=1, Product=2, SerialNumber=3
[15320305.640265] usb 2-8: Product: SABRENT
[15320305.640269] usb 2-8: Manufacturer: SABRENT
[15320305.640273] usb 2-8: SerialNumber: DB98765432143
[15320305.647077] scsi host5: uas
[15320305.648135] scsi 5:0:0:0: Direct-Access SABRENT 0104 PQ: 0 ANSI: 6
[15320305.649486] sd 5:0:0:0: Attached scsi generic sg0 type 0
[15320314.099994] sd 5:0:0:0: [sdb] 3906469888 4096-byte logical blocks: (16.0 TB/14.6 TiB)
[15320314.100177] sd 5:0:0:0: [sdb] Write Protect is off
[15320314.100180] sd 5:0:0:0: [sdb] Mode Sense: 53 00 00 08
[15320314.100497] sd 5:0:0:0: [sdb] Write cache: enabled, read cache: enabled, doesn't support DPO or FUA
[15320314.100832] sd 5:0:0:0: [sdb] Optimal transfer size 33550336 bytes
But despite the dmesg looking good there both fdisk and parted choke when trying to read the partition table of that 16TB drive and im unable to read that drive or put a new partition on it or anything.

Ive also duplicated all this on a 2nd linux machine, same exact results.

Next Ill bypass the caddy and plug the 16TB directly into a motherboard of one of these linux machines. But this will take about a week to get everything off that machine first.

In the meantime though, what does everyone make of the fact that the original 3TB drive has no partitions of anything there. Does lorex just write the ones and zeros directly to the drive? I put the original drive in there and booted the NVR up and its just happy there with it, so that obviously is normal.

 

[alastairstevenson]

In the meantime though, what does everyone make of the fact that the original 3TB drive has no partitions of anything there. Does lorex just write the ones and zeros directly to the drive? I put the original drive in there and booted the NVR up and its just happy there with it, so that obviously is normal.

The NVRs from various manufacturers in my experience use a proprietary HDD layout that's optimised for the specific use case of an NVR recording multiple continuous video streams.
They don't use any of the common general-purpose layout schemes.
If you do a Google search, you should be able to find a few academic papers where the HDD layouts for various manufacturers have been reverse-engineeed and documented and commented on.

 

[Optical Carrier]

The NVRs from various manufacturers in my experience use a proprietary HDD layout that's optimised for the specific use case of an NVR recording multiple continuous video streams.
They don't use any of the common general-purpose layout schemes.
If you do a Google search, you should be able to find a few academic papers where the HDD layouts for various manufacturers have been reverse-engineeed and documented and commented on.

ok thanks for ths... that aligns with what Im seeing then. so i guess theres no point in trying to manually put an ext4 or jfs or whatever typs of partition on this thing. later this week ill be able to plug the 16TB onto the motherboard of the otherpc and make sure it actually is a good drive. now, it is brand new never used though. we'll see

ETA: or maybe ven though I cannot read partitions of that drive in linux using my sata caddy, maybe I can directly write ones and zeros using the dd command. if so then maybe I can do that to put whatever custom partition that the nvr will recognize

 

[Optical Carrier]

Can I assume that my N882A6 would use the DHFS (Dahua File System)?