NTFS and FAT32 on one HDD?!


RingTailCoon 11

RingTailCoon 11

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Bought myself an old EMTEC Movie Cube S800 but the config of the HDD is kinda strange to me, one part of the HDD is NTFS and the other is FAT32 formatted? Am I going crazy?!

1766135958789.webp

Uuuuuh, that's normal for a media center?
 

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RingTailCoon 11 said:
Bought myself an old EMTEC Movie Cube S800 but the config of the HDD is kinda strange to me, one part of the HDD is NTFS and the other is FAT32 formatted? Am I going crazy?!

View attachment 157389

Uuuuuh, that's normal for a media center?
Click to expand...
Each separate partition (so long as they are physical and not logical partitions) can have any file system you can format it with. One caveat is that for non GPT and fat32 only formatted drives there's a max of 4 physical partitions.

I'd avoid under all circumstances using logical partitions though.

Another thing is some older drives might have to use "LBA" to address the full disk geometry with larger capacities. This will usually be in the drive's firmware so you shouldn't have to worry about that.

(Question - does that disk boot via "BIOS" or "UEFI" though or is it "multi-boot" - or you don't use it as a boot device at all).

Cheers
jimbo
 

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RingTailCoon 11 said:
Bought myself an old EMTEC Movie Cube S800 but the config of the HDD is kinda strange to me, one part of the HDD is NTFS and the other is FAT32 formatted? Am I going crazy?!
Click to expand...
The HDD layout is complex because the S800 has it's own linux-based operating system. It functions not only as an external drive, but also as a PVR with analog and DVB tuners, and can be confgured as a NAS. It appears to be an MBR disk, so limited to four partitions. The 4th partition (in green) is a logical partition containing 5 partitions of its own.

The Emtec S800 HDD Movie Cube combines much of the functionality of a DTT/analogue tuner-equipped DVD/HDD recorder (minus the disc part, of course) with an HD-capable media streamer, while also throwing video capture into the mix.

It comes with a 500GB hard disc installed that can be swapped for another 3.5in drive. It will also work with USB-attached flash sticks or external drives and can function as a back-up hard disc.

....The Linux-based software is rather tacky-looking but it's generally easy to find what you want.
Click to expand...

Manual: Manual Emtec Movie Cube S800 Media Player
 

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The HDD drive of those sort of boxes are usually consumer versions of PC HDDs they have different firmware to enable/optimise multiple recording and playback video streams along with less error checking.
As that particular Media centre has multiple functionality, not surprising the various partitions.
 

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jimbo45 said:
(Question - does that disk boot via "BIOS" or "UEFI" though or is it "multi-boot" - or you don't use it as a boot device at all).
Click to expand...
No, it's all part of a EMTEC Movie Cube Media center settop box with intern HDD.
1766256024411.webp
 

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