Formatting External Drive for JB7

[Graham Brookbanks]

I've had my JB7 for years and I love it. I transferred all my old vinyl LPs and CDs on to it and they've all gone to the charity shop. My JB7 is on all day, every day on 'random', playing through my Roksan amp and old Ditton 44 speakers.

I back up every time I add new music, using the Freecom hard drive that I bought from Brennan.  The hard drive lives in my car and plugs into the USB port so that I can listen to my music when I'm driving.

After the last back-up, the car sound system no longer 'saw' the hard drive.

I tried various things, including deleting the last recording I'd backed up and using  Microsoft's 'disk clean-up', but nothing worked.

I decided to re-format the hard drive and then back up all my music again.  The only formats available on my Windows 10 PC were ExFAT and NTFS so I chose exFAT and reformatted the disk.

The JB7 no longer recognised the hard drive.  Further research showed that the hard drive needed to be formatted to FAT 32 so I found an app which did that and re-formatted the drive to FAT32.

The JB7 still says 'no USB connected' so I'm stumped.

I'm terrified of losing my music collection if my JB7 fails - it would take hours and hundreds of pounds to replace the music and some is irreplaceable.

I decided I'd just have to buy a new hard drive, but the Brennan store has sold out.

Please can anyone tell me how to repair my hard drive?  I'm quite old and not tech-savvy, so please try to keep any solution simple.  Thanks

[PMB]

Hi Graham,

Peter Lowham recently posted these instructions -

To reformat your USB device, if you are using Windows 7 or 10, then do the following.

1.  Right click on Windows 'Start' icon.

2.  Click on 'Computer Management'.

3.  Click on 'Storage' icon.

4.  Select 'Disk Management (local)'

4.  When the 'Disk Management' window opens, select the USB device that you want to format.

5.  Select 'Delete Volume' to delete the existing volume.

6.  Ensure that the USB device is still highlighted.

7.  Right click on the highlighted USB device and select 'New Simple Volume'.

8.  Click 'Next' and 'Next'  and 'Next' again, accepting the default values shown in those windows.

9.  In the Format Partition' window, in the 'File System' field, select 'FAT32'

10.  Click 'Next' and then click 'Finish'

11.  The newly formatted partition should show in the window.

12.  The USB device should now be ready to use in your BB1.

Paul

Brennan Support.

[Graham Brookbanks]

Thanks, Paul, but that doesn't work in Windows 10. I've been that route before.  When you get to step 9 above, the only options are NTFS and exFat.  I had to use a third party app to format the disk as FAT32 and it still wasn't recognised by the JB7.  I'm wondering whether I have to partition the disk (whatever that means).

Any more ideas?

Thanks

Graham

[Roy Webster]

Hi Peter,

I had my JB7 backed up on a WD My Passport HDD which came preformatted for Mac

I only backed up once about 5 years ago so thought I better catch up. The WD froze after about 4 albums (possibly through lack of use).

My Macbook Pro (mid 2012) couldn't see it, so I asked my son to try it on his Windows PC. and he managed to format it.

My Macbook could then read it so I reformatted it FAT32 but didn't know it had to be MBR so I just let it use the default GPT.

The JB7 did try to back up but gave up after a few minutes.

I then found your reply above so tried to reformat on my Macbook but it again didn't recognize the WD. This time my son's PC can't read it so I think its time for another drive.

I am thinking of a UDB SSD or possibly a flash drive, but don't know if the JB7 would recognize either of them.

Taking a reading off the Disk Stats menu the JB7 has 729 albums; Database 1071mb; 13020 songs; 11896 mp3; v2190; 137.94 Gb used; 167.29 Gb free.

I rarely add an album anymore - maybe half a dozen a year, so was thinking of a 250 Gb SSD for back up.

I really want to back up in case the JB7 fails (it must be getting on for 10 years old now).

I would be grateful of your (or anybody else's) advice on this matter - especially with regard to the siize of the back up drive and any compatibility issues.

regards

Roy

On Thursday, December 24, 2020 at 9:12:21 PM UTC peter....@gmail.com wrote:

Hi Graham,

The problem with the JB7 not recognising the external USB HDD might be that the HDD has been partitioned as a 'GPT' type partition instead of 'MBR' type partition.  Either of these partition types can then be formatted to 'FAT32' but the Brennans (JB7, B2 & BB1 models) will only recognise the 'MBR' type partition.

Re-formatting the disk is similar to partitioning the disk but, in basic terms,  partitioning has an extra step over formatting which is relatively simple to execute once you know what you are looking at.

To perform a full 'partitioning and format' of the HDD, the format app should first ask you for the 'Partition Type' or 'Partition Style', with the options shown as 'MBR (Master Boot Record' or 'GPT (GUID Partition Table).  Select the 'MBR' option.

After 'MBR' is selected, the next option that the app will ask is for 'File System' with various options offered such as 'FAT16, FAT32, NTFS, exFAT and some others.  Select 'FAT32'.

You will also possibly be asked for 'Allocation Unit Size'.  Select this at 'Default' or if this is not offered then select something like '32K' or '16K'.

Then after the format is complete plug the HDD unit into the JB7 and check to see if the JB7 now recognises the external USB HDD.

Let us know how you get on.

Regards,

Peter.

[Peter Lowham]

Hi Roy,

Yes, you need the 'MBR' partition type for the Brennans (all models) to recognise it.  I think that your WD Passport can be recovered but it will need a more powerful formatting program to do that.  Neither the PC nor the Mac can do this natively.  You could try downloading the formatting program to your PC and see if this recovers the HDD.  The program is a free download to home users.

https://filehippo.com/download_im-magic-partition-resizer-free/

I don't see why a USB SSD or flash drive wouldn't work on the JB7 but I cannot guarantee that as I don't have a JB7.  I've been trying to buy a JB7 off eBay for a few months now, so that I could run some of these types of tests, but they are going at £120 plus for broken ones, so I have abandoned that idea for now!  

One point to watch out for is that the JB7 USB runs at USB1 speed (I think about 1.2 GB/hour compared to 27.5 GB/hour for a B2) so I think that your collection will take about 5 days to backup to the USB device. (this figure might not be very accurate, so I would welcome any other input on this)

Regarding your stats, I'm not fully clear as to what some of them mean.  Your collection has a total of 13020 songs , with 11896 being mp3.  That would leave 1124 songs presumably in 'wav' format?  

13020 songs; 11896 mp3; v2190.   I don't understand the 'v2190' part!

Regarding the brand of USB HDD,  I have started up a list of 'known working devices' and this one was recommended in another post earlier today.

Toshiba Canvio Basics USB 3.0 1TB HDD

Regards,

Peter.

[Peter Lowham]

Update from Roy via PM.

Hi Peter,

Thank you for your very helpful reply.

I'll give that formatting software a try.

Perhaps v2190 is the software version.

Could the 1124 songs be the classical ones that I didn't compress?

best regards

Roy

[Peter Lowham]

Hi Roy,

I had a look on eBay at some of the closeup pictures of JB7s for sale.  The v2190 seems to be the software version as you suggest.  And the pictures do suggest that the 'mp3' count is shown but the 'wav' count is not, so you probably do have 1124 uncompressed tracks on the JB7.

If you are asked about 'physical' or 'logical' partition, the answer is 'physical'.

Good luck with the re-format.

Regards,

Peter.

[Peter Lowham]

Hi All,

I have deleted the post above because it had a typo which could confuse.  I have fixed the error in this post.

Hi Graham,

The problem with the JB7 not recognising the external USB HDD might be that the HDD has been partitioned as a 'GPT' type partition instead of 'MBR' type partition.  Either of these partition types can then be formatted to 'FAT32' but the Brennans (JB7, B2 & BB1 models) will only recognise the 'MBR' type partition.

Re-formatting the disk is similar to partitioning the disk but, in basic terms,  partitioning has an extra step over formatting which is relatively simple to execute once you know what you are looking at.

To perform a full 'partitioning and format' of the HDD, the format app should first ask you for the 'Partition Type' or 'Partition Style', with the options shown as 'MBR (Master Boot Record' or 'GPT (GUID Partition Table).  Select the 'MBR' option.

After 'MBR' is selected, the next option that the app will ask is for 'File System' with various options offered such as 'FAT16, FAT32, NTFS, exFAT and some others.  Select 'FAT32'.

You will also possibly be asked for 'Allocation Unit Size'.  Select this at 'Default' or if this is not offered then select '32K' or '64K'.

Then after the format is complete plug the HDD unit into the JB7 and check to see if the JB7 now recognises the external USB HDD.

Let us know how you get on.

Regards,

Peter.

[Graham Brookbanks]

Hi, Peter

Thanks for your advice back in February.  All sorted now, thanks

Regards

Graham