Our spring cleanup is next month, and I'm looking forward to finding some electronic stuff to work on. Several months back, we hauled an old dishwasher to the dump, and someone had thrown away an old 19 80s ra console television, and a digital stream converter box. I loaded both up, took them home, took them apart and cleaned them up real good, took the necessary precautions, hooked them up, and they both worked like new.
those sata cables are worth salvaging here in britain most computer shops charge around £2.50 for one sky+ boxes get their signal through satellite dishes not via cable
A few weeks ago I received four security camera Nuvico DVR units, a grand total of 14 hard drives. When I checked them with my drive dock, 12 of them didnt pass the diag tests and had bad sectors. No wonder they threw them out lol. I didn't trust the other two drives so I took them all to electronic recycling. However the DVRs did have perfectly fine switch mode power supplies, good heatsinks, and almost a dozen fans. Still scored!
I don't keep drives that don't pass diags. Most of these are recycled because the cable and satellite companies have changed encoding from MPG2 to MPG4 and they are no longer compatible, so the drives are fine. I have several here and they all work fine.
I actually wanted to replace the drives in the units and sell them, since all the DVRs still work fine. But replacing the drives with new ones would cost more than the units are worth. I may just put one or two used good drives in them try and sell them cheap.
4:28 Hey, I have the exact same one! Except that I've ended up using mine for primarily laptop IDE hard drives so I don't really use the adapter. You did save the drive SATA and power cables from the box, right?
Remember these are "AV" drives, and as such are often very slow and have less error detection/correction than a standard computer drive. They are fine for backup for non-important files, but I wouldn't use them as main system drives.
NOTE - hard drives harvested from certain cable-company-provided DVRs will fail to detect on boot if used as internal drives, meaning you won't be able to use one as your primary os drive... the solution is to disable "powerup in standby." Instructions to do this in linux are basically hdparm -s0 /dev/ ... I haven't found a way to do it in Windows yet.
indeed, I noted your use of them in the video... I added this comment for the benefit of viewers who may want to use them as internal drives. It took me a lot of googling and swearing "back in the day" to resolve this (although the knowledge has become a bit more common now...)
here in britain the sky+ boxes are fixed to the address it was issued to and wont work elsewhere and i try to get these to get the hard drives out of them some of them only have 500gb hd but there are other models in the same range which are 1.5tb and 2tb but so far have not had any luck getting these size of hd so far ive managed to get two boxes which both contained 500gb hd which like you i formatted and used one via cloning as a C drive and the other as an external drive
You sure about that? On cable the signal travels around the entire neighborhood, and even IPTV such as Mediaroom as long as the box is registered and on the same network it will work. It might be registered to the address, but it can be taken to a different address as long as they have service too and it will work and receive the channel package that is assigned to that account. The address where it is connected needs to have IPTV service. If they just have internet it will not work. I have been to trouble calls at work for a client complaining that the box they bought will not access their PVR, or it gets fewer (or more) channels than they subscribe to. Upon investigation, searching the GUID or MAC I find that the box is registered to a different address. This is when I question them, and find out that they bought it from craigslist or value village. At this point I fire up my computer, de-register the box from the other account, and register on their account. This is a rare occurrence as generally when someone calls in to cancel that extra box it is removed from their account, but some people don't call in. They down size, and get rid of a TV, say when the kids move out and donate the box to the second hand store or sell it, and a registered box ends up in someone else's hands. Of course as soon as whoever buys it goes to order a movie, it would show up on the original account, and the original account holder would see the charges and call in. Soon as that happens they would find it on the other persons account, and would correct the billing, and of course delete the registration which would then automatically register it on the new account.
Is it possible to put a different size drive into cable boxes (specifically a DCT3400M)? Would be nice to upgrade the standard 500GB to a larger 2TB one I have laying around.
I did this exact procedure for my friend's Cisco 4642hd. Worked great after the box initialized the drive. I've heard in some cases you may have to re-authorize your box with your cable provider.
Yep ive done the same, usually the best part to keep, if the psu is seperate then that is kept as a parts pcb or other use.` They may not be fast but handy for a slave drive or caddy backup unit. :-D. I just delete the first sector of the drive, partition table gone!!, then format. Those sata/ide to usb cables are handy for recovering peoples data, i have a couple of them, and they are not expensive :-).
To record programming. Sure you could put in an SSD and you would wear it out quickly. Cloud-based DVR are coming very soon. Some people think this is great I won't have to record anything I'll just be able to watch it whenever I want. There is something sinister going on however that people will not like. the reason that the industry is moving away from a hard drive inside your cable box that record your programs for replay later it's because they don't want you skipping commercials and when everything moves to cloud-based they will be able to force feed commercials and you will not be able to skip them therefore you'll be watching your program on your own schedule but you are still going to see the commercials and there's nothing you can do other than push the mute button and wait for 4 minutes for your show to come back. People that currently have hard drive based systems will likely be able to keep them until they fail but once they do they'll be replaced with a cloud-based system and then you'll be forced to watch commercials. you think Netflix is the answer ha commercials are coming to Netflix too they're already here for some plans and all the plans are going to be Force feeding you commercials because that's where they make their money and then if you want to watch a show without commercials you'll pay 40 bucks for the season
Spectrum, Xfinity(non-X1), and FiOS still use cableCARD boxes like this one, can save you money nowadays buy getting one of these for like $30-50 on eBay
Yes I run a scan on them. I don't use these drives for critical applications. Just to store my video files on for editing, and then store the final projects that I upload to youtube.
For one thing, it saves having to fuss with NTFS file ownership & access permissions when connecting it to different Windows computers and transferring data...
That was a PACE brand. The local cable co has decommissioned these units, and the Motorola units are being decommissioned now. They are moving to Arris. For that matter so are we are work. We are moving away from the old Cisco IPTV boxes, and migrating to Technicolor, and Arris. The Arris for our 4K boxes, Technicolor for the regular HD boxes.
I know this old but I took a 500 GB HD out of a Shaw DCX 3400-M I can't even get it to show up in My computer. I was told the Drive is locked with encrpytion from Shaw so it can't be used without the Shaw box. It is a Seagate 500 GB Pipeline HD I have no idea how to get into this thing? Can you give me some direction so I can use it please? I have like 3 of this boxes and I'd hate to waste these hard drives.
I have formatted using win7 manage computer. The ones i have seen showed as unknown system, I deleted partition table and created new. Has worked for every drive i have tried. Have taken out if arris, Motorola and scientific Atlanta cable boxes and bell satellite boxes.
I only have Windows 10. I am using a hard drive docking station. I can hear the drive spinning but it just won't show in "My Computer" It's a 500GB Seagate Pipeline HD. Any other hard drive shows when I put them in the external dock. Someone told me that Shaw Cable puts a code on them so they can't be used?
@@muzicmax7621 Don't know anything about win10. Under win7 i have not had any trouble. I go I to manage computer and select the drive in the docking station. It shows as a non standard disk. I remove the partition and recreate it and then format.
@@12voltvids That's the thing though, it doesn't show up at all. Even as a non standard disc? Well I am going to try again...I'll keep you updated with my progress. I'll start tomorrow. My bedtime comes a lot earlier with age lol. Thanks for your help and suggestions. I really do appreciate it. I'll let you know. Talk to you tomorrow. :)
@@12voltvids I got 15 years out of my first DVR cable box it was made by motorola the DCT6412 it has a maxtor 120Gb IDE drive in it. I have no doubts that DVR hard drives are designed with high hour counts in mind, but I'd recommend that you check out the S.M.A.R.T data with a utility called crystal disk info. there are other utility's that can read that info it tells you stuff like power on hours power on count and other variables that can give insight into the health of the Hard drive also works with SSDs and drives from the 90s
I have a similar situation and I'm looking to format a 3.5 hdd I found in a cable box I went on Amazon to purchase a cheap adapter as I would only be using it once, but then a question came about I can't solve For formatting... Do I want an Hdd to USB cable or USB to Hdd cable I'm new to all this so any tips would help!
I have them, i take the hdd out of them and the powersupply and then connect a usb to uart to them to try to mess with them its fun and enough slavageable parts
If your unemployed and have all the time in the world dedicated to reverse engineering and security research, yes! The modern ones are basically just routers but with video output.
I would think for different payloads. I didn't look on this one, but some boxes have the partitions in different formats. Some in FAT16, others in FAT32, and some in a non standard partition. Satellite boxes are good for that. Others just put the firmware in one partition, the system management and keys in another, and the encrypted payload in a separate folder by itself.
(Takes a Black & Decker electric screwdriver and uses it like a manual tool.) That's funny, but not because you didn't use the electric function, but that the electric function likely doesn't work, which seems to be the case with a lot of battery-powered B&D hand tools like this. But, I'll bet one reason why you did use it: it allows for a very nice grip.
I use it because it fits the security bit. You are correct the batteries are toast in it. If they would hold I charge I would use it as a screw driver still.
Wow your cable company let their customers keep their boxes, where I am not only do they don't and if they find out that I opened their box I could possibly face jail time. I wonder it is possible to replace the cable company's firmware with one for a DTV box with DVR.
These are old boxes that they no longer support. They are MPG2 boxes, and they have migrated to MPG4 now, so they won't receive anything. They don't want them back, as they are no longer usable for anything. All analog signals, and MPG2 signals are gone now.
yes that's true,our cable company is still migrating to H.264 on all of their channels but some of their SD channels are still in MPEG2.that's why I mentioned flashing the firmware with one for a DTV box with DVR since over the air ATSC is still MPEG2.
Where do you live? In the US, most cable companies don't allow opening cable boxes, but you don't go to jail for it. You just end up paying for the whole box.
I live in Brazil.I did some research and it turns out that you can't be sent to jail just for opening up the box and indeed you do have to pay for it,however you can get jail time for modifying their or any box to get channel that you don't subscribe to.
Most of them ate 250 to 320G drives. Newer models typically have 500, but those ones are few and far between. Even old satellite boxes usually only have 250 or 320G drives. Still 320 holds plenty of files, and I am not paying anything for them.
I also use crystaldiskinfo for the S.M.A.R.T. function crystalmark.info/redirect.php?product=CrystalDiskInfoAnd for deleting the complete harddisk i use diskpart in the command prompt so when i selected the harddisk in diskpart and use the option clean the complete harddisk is empty and the MBR is also empty (diskpart is a built in windows command but use with caution)
On some formats I have to use diskpart, such as units that use a linux type format. Satellite boxes are usually the ones that a format that windows can not see, but this drive no problem, windows can see and partition it.
squareroot99999999 that's only because the batteries are shot and they don't make these ones anymore. I needed something to hold that security bit so if the bit fits ....
Our spring cleanup is next month, and I'm looking forward to finding some electronic stuff to work on. Several months back, we hauled an old dishwasher to the dump, and someone had thrown away an old 19 80s ra console television, and a digital stream converter box. I loaded both up, took them home, took them apart and cleaned them up real good, took the necessary precautions, hooked them up, and they both worked like new.
those sata cables are worth salvaging here in britain most computer shops charge around £2.50 for one sky+ boxes get their signal through satellite dishes not via cable
I enjoy taking a peak inside those set top boxes.
You never know, maybe one of them will still have a serial console on UART.
Something that I did not know. I enjoy your vids.
A few weeks ago I received four security camera Nuvico DVR units, a grand total of 14 hard drives. When I checked them with my drive dock, 12 of them didnt pass the diag tests and had bad sectors. No wonder they threw them out lol. I didn't trust the other two drives so I took them all to electronic recycling. However the DVRs did have perfectly fine switch mode power supplies, good heatsinks, and almost a dozen fans. Still scored!
I don't keep drives that don't pass diags. Most of these are recycled because the cable and satellite companies have changed encoding from MPG2 to MPG4 and they are no longer compatible, so the drives are fine.
I have several here and they all work fine.
I actually wanted to replace the drives in the units and sell them, since all the DVRs still work fine. But replacing the drives with new ones would cost more than the units are worth. I may just put one or two used good drives in them try and sell them cheap.
4:28 Hey, I have the exact same one! Except that I've ended up using mine for primarily laptop IDE hard drives so I don't really use the adapter. You did save the drive SATA and power cables from the box, right?
Yes of course I saved the power and SATA and the ESATA cable,
Remember these are "AV" drives, and as such are often very slow and have less error detection/correction than a standard computer drive. They are fine for backup for non-important files, but I wouldn't use them as main system drives.
Most of the ones I have are Seagate Pipeline HD 2 video rated drives.
The 1 TB drives are Toshiba and Samsung.
NOTE - hard drives harvested from certain cable-company-provided DVRs will fail to detect on boot if used as internal drives, meaning you won't be able to use one as your primary os drive... the solution is to disable "powerup in standby." Instructions to do this in linux are basically hdparm -s0 /dev/ ... I haven't found a way to do it in Windows yet.
emolatur
I have only used these as storage drives in a docking station. My os is on a SSD and so far so good.
indeed, I noted your use of them in the video... I added this comment for the benefit of viewers who may want to use them as internal drives. It took me a lot of googling and swearing "back in the day" to resolve this (although the knowledge has become a bit more common now...)
here in britain the sky+ boxes are fixed to the address it was issued to and wont work elsewhere and i try to get these to get the hard drives out of them some of them only have 500gb hd but there are other models in the same range which are 1.5tb and 2tb but so far have not had any luck getting these size of hd so far ive managed to get two boxes which both contained 500gb hd which like you i formatted and used one via cloning as a C drive and the other as an external drive
You sure about that? On cable the signal travels around the entire neighborhood, and even IPTV such as Mediaroom as long as the box is registered and on the same network it will work. It might be registered to the address, but it can be taken to a different address as long as they have service too and it will work and receive the channel package that is assigned to that account. The address where it is connected needs to have IPTV service. If they just have internet it will not work.
I have been to trouble calls at work for a client complaining that the box they bought will not access their PVR, or it gets fewer (or more) channels than they subscribe to. Upon investigation, searching the GUID or MAC I find that the box is registered to a different address. This is when I question them, and find out that they bought it from craigslist or value village.
At this point I fire up my computer, de-register the box from the other account, and register on their account. This is a rare occurrence as generally when someone calls in to cancel that extra box it is removed from their account, but some people don't call in. They down size, and get rid of a TV, say when the kids move out and donate the box to the second hand store or sell it, and a registered box ends up in someone else's hands.
Of course as soon as whoever buys it goes to order a movie, it would show up on the original account, and the original account holder would see the charges and call in. Soon as that happens they would find it on the other persons account, and would correct the billing, and of course delete the registration which would then automatically register it on the new account.
Is it possible to put a different size drive into cable boxes (specifically a DCT3400M)? Would be nice to upgrade the standard 500GB to a larger 2TB one I have laying around.
I did this exact procedure for my friend's Cisco 4642hd. Worked great after the box initialized the drive. I've heard in some cases you may have to re-authorize your box with your cable provider.
Yep ive done the same, usually the best part to keep, if the psu is seperate then that is kept as a parts pcb or other use.`
They may not be fast but handy for a slave drive or caddy backup unit. :-D.
I just delete the first sector of the drive, partition table gone!!, then format.
Those sata/ide to usb cables are handy for recovering peoples data, i have a couple of them, and they are not expensive :-).
What are the purpuse of having storage in cable boxes?
Also is it possible to install a different harddrive in them or an ssd?
To record programming.
Sure you could put in an SSD and you would wear it out quickly. Cloud-based DVR are coming very soon. Some people think this is great I won't have to record anything I'll just be able to watch it whenever I want. There is something sinister going on however that people will not like. the reason that the industry is moving away from a hard drive inside your cable box that record your programs for replay later it's because they don't want you skipping commercials and when everything moves to cloud-based they will be able to force feed commercials and you will not be able to skip them therefore you'll be watching your program on your own schedule but you are still going to see the commercials and there's nothing you can do other than push the mute button and wait for 4 minutes for your show to come back. People that currently have hard drive based systems will likely be able to keep them until they fail but once they do they'll be replaced with a cloud-based system and then you'll be forced to watch commercials. you think Netflix is the answer ha commercials are coming to Netflix too they're already here for some plans and all the plans are going to be Force feeding you commercials because that's where they make their money and then if you want to watch a show without commercials you'll pay 40 bucks for the season
Spectrum, Xfinity(non-X1), and FiOS still use cableCARD boxes like this one, can save you money nowadays buy getting one of these for like $30-50 on eBay
Cable card was never used in Canada.
cant wait to see the episode with the vcr!
Anything you can do with the old M-cards that used to go in cable boxes
Not that i know of. They were never used here.
Do you ever test the hard drive for errors? You may start backing up files and a drive could have bad sectors. I always use crystaldisk info
Yes I run a scan on them. I don't use these drives for critical applications. Just to store my video files on for editing, and then store the final projects that I upload to youtube.
Why do you use EX-FAT?
For one thing, it saves having to fuss with NTFS file ownership & access permissions when connecting it to different Windows computers and transferring data...
Cross platform comparability.
I like to use flash drives for that.
That's an early version cable box they are so small now. Who made this box what company
That was a PACE brand.
The local cable co has decommissioned these units, and the Motorola units are being decommissioned now. They are moving to Arris.
For that matter so are we are work. We are moving away from the old Cisco IPTV boxes, and migrating to Technicolor, and Arris. The Arris for our 4K boxes, Technicolor for the regular HD boxes.
I know this old but I took a 500 GB HD out of a Shaw DCX 3400-M I can't even get it to show up in My computer. I was told the Drive is locked with encrpytion from Shaw so it can't be used without the Shaw box. It is a Seagate 500 GB Pipeline HD I have no idea how to get into this thing? Can you give me some direction so I can use it please? I have like 3 of this boxes and I'd hate to waste these hard drives.
I have formatted using win7 manage computer. The ones i have seen showed as unknown system, I deleted partition table and created new. Has worked for every drive i have tried. Have taken out if arris, Motorola and scientific Atlanta cable boxes and bell satellite boxes.
I only have Windows 10. I am using a hard drive docking station. I can hear the drive spinning but it just won't show in "My Computer" It's a 500GB Seagate Pipeline HD. Any other hard drive shows when I put them in the external dock.
Someone told me that Shaw Cable puts a code on them so they can't be used?
@@muzicmax7621
Don't know anything about win10. Under win7 i have not had any trouble. I go I to manage computer and select the drive in the docking station. It shows as a non standard disk. I remove the partition and recreate it and then format.
@@12voltvids That's the thing though, it doesn't show up at all. Even as a non standard disc? Well I am going to try again...I'll keep you updated with my progress. I'll start tomorrow. My bedtime comes a lot earlier with age lol. Thanks for your help and suggestions. I really do appreciate it.
I'll let you know. Talk to you tomorrow. :)
I imagine Cable box DVR hard drives have alot of hours on them so they could have a chance of being worn out or near the end because they run 24/7 365
They are all heavy duty video drives designed for constant service. None of the ones i have used have ever giving trouble.
@@12voltvids I got 15 years out of my first DVR cable box it was made by motorola the DCT6412 it has a maxtor 120Gb IDE drive in it.
I have no doubts that DVR hard drives are designed with high hour counts in mind,
but I'd recommend that you check out the S.M.A.R.T data with a utility called crystal disk info.
there are other utility's that can read that info it tells you stuff like power on hours power on count and other variables that can give insight into the health of the Hard drive also works with SSDs and drives from the 90s
I have a similar situation and I'm looking to format a 3.5 hdd I found in a cable box
I went on Amazon to purchase a cheap adapter as I would only be using it once, but then a question came about I can't solve
For formatting...
Do I want an Hdd to USB cable or USB to Hdd cable
I'm new to all this so any tips would help!
USB to sata for Sata drives or USB to ide for ide drives. Most if the USB cables will work with both ide and sata drives.
Here's a cheap adapter that will suit your needs: smile.amazon.com/dp/B077N2KK27/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_glt_fabc_1D6CAWJ4QTEWW3EV5P51
I have them, i take the hdd out of them and the powersupply and then connect a usb to uart to them to try to mess with them its fun and enough slavageable parts
Ik this video was posted 6 years ago but is it possible to turn a old cable box into a computer
If your unemployed and have all the time in the world dedicated to reverse engineering and security research, yes!
The modern ones are basically just routers but with video output.
Why did it have so many small partitions
I would think for different payloads. I didn't look on this one, but some boxes have the partitions in different formats. Some in FAT16, others in FAT32, and some in a non standard partition. Satellite boxes are good for that. Others just put the firmware in one partition, the system management and keys in another, and the encrypted payload in a separate folder by itself.
(Takes a Black & Decker electric screwdriver and uses it like a manual tool.)
That's funny, but not because you didn't use the electric function, but that the electric function likely doesn't work, which seems to be the case with a lot of battery-powered B&D hand tools like this.
But, I'll bet one reason why you did use it: it allows for a very nice grip.
I use it because it fits the security bit. You are correct the batteries are toast in it. If they would hold I charge I would use it as a screw driver still.
Ah, yes. A hexagonal bit with the security torx at the end?
can get 2 new batteries ebay $20
I got lucky with a 500 gig Seagate hard drive
Ah Vers a pac screwdriver love mine can get the cells on ebay cheap new
Wow your cable company let their customers keep their boxes, where I am not only do they don't and if they find out that I opened their box I could possibly face jail time. I wonder it is possible to replace the cable company's firmware with one for a DTV box with DVR.
These are old boxes that they no longer support. They are MPG2 boxes, and they have migrated to MPG4 now, so they won't receive anything. They don't want them back, as they are no longer usable for anything. All analog signals, and MPG2 signals are gone now.
yes that's true,our cable company is still migrating to H.264 on all of their channels but some of their SD channels are still in MPEG2.that's why I mentioned flashing the firmware with one for a DTV box with DVR since over the air ATSC is still MPEG2.
I don't know that the tuner in this box is ATSC compatable.
Cable companies usually use QPSK or QUAM
Where do you live? In the US, most cable companies don't allow opening cable boxes, but you don't go to jail for it. You just end up paying for the whole box.
I live in Brazil.I did some research and it turns out that you can't be sent to jail just for opening up the box and indeed you do have to pay for it,however you can get jail time for modifying their or any box to get channel that you don't subscribe to.
I thought that it was going to be a 500GB drive.
Most of them ate 250 to 320G drives. Newer models typically have 500, but those ones are few and far between. Even old satellite boxes usually only have 250 or 320G drives. Still 320 holds plenty of files, and I am not paying anything for them.
12voltvids mine is 1 tb The New spectrum boxes
I also use crystaldiskinfo for the S.M.A.R.T. function crystalmark.info/redirect.php?product=CrystalDiskInfoAnd for deleting the complete harddisk i use diskpart in the command prompt so when i selected the harddisk in diskpart and use the option clean the complete harddisk is empty and the MBR is also empty (diskpart is a built in windows command but use with caution)
On some formats I have to use diskpart, such as units that use a linux type format. Satellite boxes are usually the ones that a format that windows can not see, but this drive no problem, windows can see and partition it.
Formatting=useless, needs to be secure erased with naraeon software
It amused me to watch you use a powered screwdriver in manual mode.
squareroot99999999
that's only because the batteries are shot and they don't make these ones anymore. I needed something to hold that security bit so if the bit fits ....