E2 Images on Internal HDD

[Steve_M]

Have managed to get the AAF and HD Freaks E2 Images running off the internal HDD rather than USB.

It involves re-formatting the internal HDD so any recordings etc will be lost so transfer anything you want to keep.

The guides I've used have been produced by FSC830 over at AAF and have been uploaded here for convenience.

Firstly, I booted the original firmware and re-formatted the internal HDD.

Next I created four partitions on the HDD using AAF Maxiboot Installer, one for storage (/dev/sda1), two to hold the E2 Images (/dev/sda2 and /dev/sda3) and one for swap (/dev/sda4).
This was done using the attached E2_Internal_HDD.pdf guide.
Note that there is a mistake on page 4, 'Use the tune2fs -L RECORD' should read 'Use the jfs_tune -L RECORD'

I have a 500Gb Hdd installed so I used 500Mb for the two E2 images, 2Gb swap and the remainder for storage.

Once the partitions were created, I booted up the original firmware to make sure that the internal HDD had been mounted OK.

Next I loaded the AAF E2 Media Center Edition onto the the first E2 image partition (/dev/sda2) and HD Freaks V6 onto the second (/dev/sda3) using AAF Maxiboot Installer in the same way you would install an image to a USB stick.

Finally I modified the bootargs using the AAF Recovery tool not as the guide suggests but as detailed on page 37 of the AAF Recovery Tool guide (sticky at top of this section).

So now, when booting using Maxi Uboot I have the following boot options:

SATA 1 AAF Media Center Edition
SATA 2 HD Freaks V6
USB 1 (For testing images)
USB 2 (For testing images)

By having the E2 image on the HDD I find it boots faster and is much more responsive. It also removes the USB stick from the front of the box.