backup / image backup might need to be done out of the box but are you suggesting to do the rest whilst the HDD is in the Humax?
#2 and #3 will be much faster with the disk in a caddy attached to a more capable machine.
...How do you execute a long SMART test? is that a normal fixdisk?
It's an option there, but otherwise
smartctl -t long /dev/sdx
(from memory) where sdx has to be replaced by the appropriate value for the disk. Then after some period that it will suggest check the result with
smartctl -l selftest /dev/sdx
, and again later if the test hasn't finished, and so on.
All these options will remove the current setup of the webif and its packages (not forgetting the recordings) and there is no easy way it seems other than writing down what you had installed and then going through it once re installed and set it all back up. ...
Some settings and packages live in the flash storage and will persist regardless of the disk.
Everything else lives in
/mod
. Therefore you can copy over your saved
/mod
tree (exclude
/mod/boot
, which is actually the flash storage) to restore your system. In case some package files might be corrupted, you can reinstall all the packages, either manually or with a script; as the list of packages is in flash storage, you could actually do that without copying the original package files, but not all package settings are in the proper places, namely root's home directory and
/mod/etc
(eg,
Mediatomb), so it's easier to copy everything.
As for the recordings, one benefit of
ddrescue is that it tells you (like
fix-disk which files might be affected by disk errors, so saving you the many hours you would otherwise have to use to watch each programme to check for errors.