# Want to run Samsung hutil, but no floppy drive in PC.



## PPJ (Jun 26, 2002)

Hi all,

Title says it all really, except to say that my PC runs XP and booting XP with your TiVo drive attached is a no-no, right?

How can I get round this? I don't really want to buy a floppy drive just for this. Building a Win98 or WinMe system may be an option, as I have an old spare HDD, but it seems a bit long-winded. Is there a bootable CD method?

I'm sure other people must have come up against this, since most PCs are made without floppy drives now.

Any ideas or advice appreciated.

Thanks in advance,

PPJ


----------



## Ian_m (Jan 9, 2001)

Try a USB floppy from Ebuyer for £15 ?

If not is the diagnostics you require on here ?
http://www.ultimatebootcd.com/


----------



## PPJ (Jun 26, 2002)

Ian_m said:


> If not is the diagnostics you require on here ?
> http://www.ultimatebootcd.com/


 :up:

Looks like it is. I'll give it a try.

Thanks.


----------



## AMc (Mar 22, 2002)

To run this (and finding myself with a floppy drive but without a blank disk) I just added the Hutil.exe to a bootable floppy (PowerMax FWIW).
I assume if you can create a bootable CDROM and add Hutil you should be able to get it to work.


----------



## PPJ (Jun 26, 2002)

AMc said:


> I assume if you can create a bootable CDROM and add Hutil you should be able to get it to work.


You would think so, wouldn't you. But can you?


----------



## Ian_m (Jan 9, 2001)

http://www.ultimatebootcd.com/ already has Samsung Hutil on it.


----------



## PPJ (Jun 26, 2002)

Ian_m said:


> http://www.ultimatebootcd.com/ already has Samsung Hutil on it.


Yes, currently trying to get it to work. Have you used this? Keep getting:

Bad command or filename - "hutil"


----------



## blindlemon (May 12, 2002)

Do you absolutely have to use Hutil? 

I find Hitachi's DFT to be better for testing most drives, and their Ftool can be used to change the AMM settings on Samsung drives anyway.


----------



## PPJ (Jun 26, 2002)

Hang on - I've just realised something (maybe).

The rule about XP only applies *after* you've configured the tivo drive, doesn't it?

So if I'm starting with a new drive, or I'm happy to lose everything on the tivo drive, I can quite happily let XP boot with tivo drive attached and run hutil from within XP.

Later, when I run the mfsrestore, it will overwrite any nonsense put on there by XP.

If so, I've been worrying about nothing all this time. Doh!


----------



## PPJ (Jun 26, 2002)

blindlemon said:


> Do you absolutely have to use Hutil?
> 
> I find Hitachi's DFT to be better for testing most drives, and their Ftool can be used to change the AMM settings on Samsung drives anyway.


Thanks blindlemon.

From the sound of it, no, I don't have to use hutil. If the Hitachi tool will do the job better, I'll use that.


----------



## Ian_m (Jan 9, 2001)

The virtual DOS floppy (actually FreeDOS/Linux) does cause issues. Some of the utilities don't boot on Via proceessors, others on AMD and finally some on Intel, so much for Linux running on everything !!!

Try using an older version of the UBCD. I sometimes get different result/success with version 3.3/3.2 and 3.1.

Finally you could follow the instructions on that site to integrate a proper version of DOS ie from Win98. I did it years ago with UBCD V 1.6, so it can be done, but the CD was superceded almost immediately by a later version, which worked better.

Anyway just tried UBCD 3.3 on a 2.2GHz Pentium M motherboard (boot complained about not knowing chipset Intel 915 as too new) but it started to menu and selecrted HUTIL and it runs fine on both my Samsung IDE and Samsung SATA drives that by complete fluke happen to be attached to the motherboard.


----------



## PPJ (Jun 26, 2002)

Hitachi DFT boots OK on the version of UBCD I'm using (3.4), so I've got the test running on the first drive now. 

Will give the management tool a go once this has finished.

I suupose if you really need to run hutil, the boot-in-XP approach is OK as a last resort (say if you decided that the thing is not working and you need a fault code for the warranty).


----------



## PPJ (Jun 26, 2002)

Hello again.

Thanks for all you help so far everyone.

The quick test worked OK with the Samsung drive, but the advanced test froze when it was in the "smart test" part.

Could it be that the smart test is only for Hitachi drives? I noticed that you can disable this part of the test, so I'm running the avanced test again in this mode.

Thanks,

PPJ.


----------



## blindlemon (May 12, 2002)

Yes, some newer versions of some Samsung drive firmware do exhibit this behaviour with DFT. 

That's why I said "most" drives...


----------



## PPJ (Jun 26, 2002)

They're the 250GB, 5400 rpm jobs: like this

I haven't managed to a stable working tivo with either of them. I get spontaineous re-boots, blocky or frozen playback, very slow responses to the remote etc. That's why I want to give them a thorough check.

I suppose I can't come to any conclusion about their health either way, given the result of the Hitachi test. Looks like I will have to run the Samsung check after all, so I'm going to try and get hold of a floppy drive today.


----------



## Ian_m (Jan 9, 2001)

PPJ said:


> Hello again.
> 
> Thanks for all you help so far everyone.
> 
> ...


You should really run the test S/W supplied by the manufacturer. SMART drive diagnostics may be a standard, but is a variable standard between drive manufacturers which is why the UBCD has them all.

As an aside I find Seagate Seatools one of the best to run with other manufacturers drives.


----------



## blindlemon (May 12, 2002)

PPJ said:


> I haven't managed to a stable working tivo with either of them.


In that case, I would suspect either the way you are imaging the drives or, maybe, your PSU.

The likelihood of getting two bad drives out of two - _especially _from Samsung - has to be remote to say the least...

BTW, earlier versions of that drive (with different firmware) did not hang in the DFT SMART test but the current ones do - so, guess what, I test them with HUTIL ...from a floppy


----------



## PPJ (Jun 26, 2002)

blindlemon said:


> BTW, earlier versions of that drive (with different firmware) did not hang in the DFT SMART test but the current ones do - so, guess what, I test them with HUTIL ...from a floppy


OK, nice to know they're doing what they should do, so far. I've managed to borrow an internal floppy drive and also a USB one, so I will try these out when I get home this evening. Can you boot from a USB floppy drive?

It could be a problem with the images I suppose. Because of the problems I've had so far, I've ended up going back to an old image I had from some time ago and which I've successfully restored in the past. I've stepped through the upgrades I need, so that I've got a working system, with the config I want on each tivo (120 GB + turbonet and 120 GB + cachecard). I'm going to run each of these for a couple of days to get some reasonable confidence that they are stable, then have another go, following Steve Conrad's instructions exactly.

In the meantime, I'm going to make sure that the new disks are healthy.


----------



## Ian_m (Jan 9, 2001)

PPJ said:


> .............Can you boot from a USB floppy drive?...........


Yes if your BIOS is new enough, though I have not found any VIA processor based board that would boot 100% with USB devices and some AMD boards are a tad dodgy. Not had any issues with Intel based products and USB booting. I even managed to install Vista from a USB DVD drive onto a SATA system, which suprised me, expecting the usual "unknown boot device type errors".


----------



## PPJ (Jun 26, 2002)

Thought I'd give an update, just in case something here might be helpful to others.

1. I found another boot-from-CD type thing: Hiren's bootCD, which has lots of useful tools on it. However, it still wouldn't run Samsung hutil on my PC.

2. I tried using Seagate disk tools, as mentioned by Ian_m, from Hiren's CD and it gave both HDs a clean bill of health.

3. I did manage to get both Tivos working, by going through the process I mentioned earlier - i.e. going back to an old image, restoring it onto a 120G drive, then installing the network drivers. Once everything seemed to be working normally, I used the LBA48 version of mfstools2 to backup again, then restore to the 250G drive, then modfiy the kernel (more or less as described here) .

4. Floppy drives can be bought very cheaply - e.g. this one for about £4 delivered. I've ordered one to save myself a lot of hassle next time something like this happens.

5. Smartftp has been mentioned on this forum before. I can confirm that it's a very useful and easy to use tool for moving things onto tivo, once the basic networking software is installed.

Thanks again for everone's help and advice on this problem.

PPJ


----------

