AverMedia c285 recording problem

[wkw57]

I have a Avermedia c285 game capture HDMI recorder and a 500 GB external drive that I have been using for years that developed this weird problem a few days ago where it won't record anymore. It all started when the drive got too full and I was unable to stop it ( would not respond to any commands from the remote ). I had to shut it down from the power button on the unit, and nothing got saved on the hard drive. I copied all the files off the HD onto another drive to free up space. After that the unit would no longer respond to the "stop" command nce I started a recording. I have to turn the power off each time and nothing gets saved. I tried reformatting the drive then noticed in the settings menu it keeps showing "USB Disk Partition 2/" as the storage destination but the disk info only shows "USB Disk Partition 1" as my device.. I can change it to partition 1 in the settings but it NEVER stays there.... always reverts back to "partition 2" after a power down and won't record anything because there is no "partition 2" on my drive. Is there any way to fix this? I even tried reformatting the drive a few times on my PC with no luck.

[jwillis84]

It sounds like the coin battery inside the case has gone bad. The c285 is the same design as the er310.

This teardown and repair of the er310 was from a Korean blog in November of 2020.

"The video recorder I've been using for the past four years suddenly froze and stopped working."

[wkw57]

I opened mine up and the battery was bad! Some corrosion and it was down to 2 volts instead of 3. I'm surprised the unit still kept the date and time. I replaced it but it did NOT fix my problem... It still keeps defaulting itself to the non-existent "USB disk partition 2" and will not not complete a recording.

[jwillis84]

You might checked the version of the firmware your running on it.

The Game Capture HD II - C285 had six firmware releases from 2016 - 2018 they are all available under Downloads, the older ones are under the READ MORE link at the bottom.

In total that means Seven (7) firmware releases counting the factory release.

[wkw57]

Mine has 1.2.0 on it. I see the newest is 1.2.5 Any chance it might have gotten corrupted when I had to unplug it? I can try that but need to buy a blank thumb drive first. Unit worked flawlessly for 4 years before this crazy problem popped up. I did all kinds of checking on the USB hard drive too including a 2-hour full format but it seems fine.

[jwillis84]

I don't know.

If it was working before, I tend to think it should work as before.. but something like a setting got corrupted. After changing the battery you would think you could "exercise" the setting and make it see the storage you have connected and reset it.

Another possibility is the wall adapter has gone almost bad. If it doesn't provide enough power to the hard drive it might not show up. The wall adapters have a finite lifespan and tend to get weaker over time.. you could try a replacement. Or a powered usb hub.

Two possible sources:: AverMedia Support could send you one, or ordering one yourself.

On my er310 (which looks very similar) it says:

Part Description 12V 1.5A, Barrel 5.5/2.5mm, Center Positive, US 2-Pin Plug
Part Number WB-18D12R $14.99 usd

Be sure any replacement you try has the same voltage and polarity as your original adapter.

If you try to find a usb hub, finding a powered one can be hard to find these days. I generally use a USB powered dock.. but its the same idea.. it has its own powered connection to the wall and then a USB cable to the PC (or er310).

A USB connected SSD might also require slightly less power and work without much effort.. though if it is the wall adapter going bad.. it will eventually have to be replaced.

One last thought.. be sure the hard drive is NTFS formatted before connecting it to the c285. Partitioning is not enough, it can "check" an NTFS file system, but it can't fully format the drive. Often I'll figure I'll format, or reformat the drive in the recorder and forget it can't do that.. and weird options will show up in the menus.. like (no hard drive available). Just attach it to a PC and partition and format the file system with NTFS.. the later firmwares will even work with a GPT partitioned hard drive.. but the older firmwares would only work with old style MBR partitioned hard drives. MBR is getting so old now that I think even from the factory new hard drives only come GPT partitioned as FAT32 or something. Eventually you'll have to take that into account.. or update the firmware to keep up with the changing times.

[wkw57]

I went to get a thumb drive at Walmart to load the firmware and found a 250 GB solid state USB powered drive for only $40 there. So I grabbed one of those too in case my HD has a problem. I have three iView 3500s that I use to record broadcast TV shows with but those have the power supply board inside the unit (no adapter). I already had to replace two capacitors on two of the units when they started failing to recognize the drive or start a timer recording. One cap exploded inside the unit when I was using it! I was going to check that too if the firmware update or new drive doesn't fix this one. I'll have to cut open the adapter to get to the caps though. I'll let you know what happens here. Thanks.

[jwillis84]

I would wait on the firmware update until your confident about the power supply.

This FAQ seems to suggest if your hard drive is GPT partitioned it might give you problems like your seeing.

The thing about GPT is it can (appear as an MBR) at the same time if its re-partitioned as GPT after it was partitioned as an MBR.. it confuses any operating system that only understands MBR. Windows 10 and later default to re-partioning as GPT (only).

its usually best to update the firmware on the c285 and given in to Microsoft.

The FAQ for firmware before 1.2.3 says:

I’ve already formatted my hard drive into NTFS and plugged it , but still receive error: “ensure that a NTFS formatted hard drive is installed”. How to solve this situation?

Please confirm whether your hard drive has encryption or not. Kindly note that ER130/ER310/C285/CR530 only supports MBR (master boot record) partition table, the encrypted hard drives however use GPT (GUID partition table).

The solution in this case is changing partition table format of hard drive from GPT to MBR.

[wkw57]

I went ahead and updated the firmware and started using the new SSD drive and it's working fine now! Responds to the stop command and shows partition 1 in the destination setting too. I may have also caused problems by deleting the files on my laptop after copying shows off instead of deleting it in the AverMedia menu. I noticed a huge 65 GB file the first time I cleared the older drive that must have contained indexing info on almost 4 years worth of shows that I had long since deleted using my laptop. Not taking that chance anymore. Going to just copy files off then delete them only in the C285 menu. Don't think there was any kind of encryption on the old drive but I'm not going to use it on the c285 anymore. Seems fine on laptop.

[jwillis84]

Good to hear.