format manditory when doing a firmware update?

[mike_smit]

is it manditory to do a HDD format when doing a firmware update? my hdd is nearly full and it wil take more then a day to back it up and copy everything back.

also my audio is connected via coax, should i download the NOHD_AUDIO firmware?

yours sincirely,

mike

[jer1956]

It's mandatory in the sense that if you don't...and have strange disk issues... the only advice given will be backup and reformat. 4.0.4 created a lot of file/disk issues. 4.0.5 is just a tweaked version with the same file/disk issues. We wasted a lot of time trying to help users with problems, avoid re-formatting. They had to in the end.

[mike_smit]

thanks, i couldnt get an answer to the formatting i wil begin the back up in a few minutes.

and it makes sense i download the no hd audio firmware since i dont use hdmi audio. is this assumption right?

[Maasbommel]

You only need the HD audio version if your amp supports TrueHD audio.
As coax amps don't you are right.

[fallex]

Reading jer1956 answer reference (which I understand to mean that the drive should be reformatted) installing this latest and previous firmware updates, I just wondered why a reformat is actually required, I think I,ve always opened up the Mede8er, disconnected the hard drive then carried out the firmware upgrade.
I,ve done it like this so as to reduce the possibility of something going wrong and possibly corrupting the drive etc.
Once I,ve proved the latest firmware seems to be running ok I ,ve simply reconnected the harddrive.
Admittedly on the first couple of updates, I,d backed up the drive,s contents onto  the PC just in case, as the amount of data stored on the drive was quite small.
Afterall like mike_smit there is no way that I want to try and transfer 2TB of files from one harddrive to another,
take my word for it it takes a long time to transfer that amount of data be it on IDE,SATA or worst of all USB 2 (not got usb 3 board don't know how good that is) plus all the messing about possibly swapping drives in and out of your PC/external enclosure. Also consider the cost now of a extra backup 2TB harddrive.
Not for one minute am I suggesting jer1956 is wrong, I,m just letting other users know that this is the way I,ve approached
firmware upgrades.
I accept that there may be strange disk issues as jer1956 states its just that I,ve not come across them, maybe I,ve been lucky with my 2TB Samsung Ecogreen 5400 drive, as I,ve never had a problem with it.
I,ve been that impressed with them I put 2 more in my NAS unit, anyway hope this as been of interest to some users out there, I,ll stand by to be shot down by tales of users using this method and having problems.
Thumbs up for the latest version which I,ll put on tomorrow, be glad to hopefully see the back of that screen saver issue.

[jer1956]

Disk issues only affect a minority of users..but we can't predict who that minorty might be. It was the op who used the word "mandatory". I indicated in what sense we might look at it.  Most users  like to avoid problems if they can...even if doing so might be inconvnient.