Cooling Fan stopped working??? maybe! advice please

A

atb

New Member
Hello,
I've been having issues with dodgy recordings - coming up with messages when playing back like the channel is scrambled and jumping and so thought the hard disk was on its way out.

I'd replaced the hard disk in my old 9200t years back and built PCs so no biggie for me to do.
So I've opened up my HDR-Fox T2 to have a look at the hard disk to find out what make/model it is to then find a replacement...

But I've noticed that the fan is not working...
which might mean that the hard disk is over heating and so not working as it should and not faulty as I thought.

So I now have the box back plugged in with the lid off and the fan where I can see it (stood up on top of the HD :) ) and I'm using it as normal.

The fan has not come on once over that last 2 hours... I've been recording and playing back ect.
So before I go out and buy a new fan dose the HDR-Fox T2 control the fan - turn it on and off as its needed and it is in fact working... it's just not got hot enough yet or is it really broken?

and then if the fan IS working then look into replacing the hard disk.

Any advice?
 
The fan is (as you suspect) controlled by the temperature reading from the HDD. It almost certainly will not spin up with the lid off. My test is to fold a slip of paper and balance it hanging to block the fan vent. If the paper is still there after extended operation (with the lid on!) you know the fan has not run up.

If you care to install the custom firmware, you will find the sysmon utility which can be used to provide graphical monitoring of the system temperature (with the points at which the fan is expected to go through its various control levels, and a falling curve indicates the fan is running!), and the fan package which allows you to force the fan to run.
 
Also with the custom firmware you can look at the SMART data for the hard drive which will allow you to make an informed decision about its state of health.
 
thanks for the advice...

this is what I've done so far -
put it all back together
Installed the custom firmware
accessed the web interface and right away I get this massage in a red box -

!! WARNING !!
There appear to be some hardware problems with the internal hard disk on this device.
Disk realloc sector count is: 384

it could be the hard disk then!
oh and I've placed the folded paper over the fan to see if it come on at all... and it has! so the fan is working!
 
It's probably worth running "fix-disk" at a telnet prompt at this point. Then follow the instructions.
 
atb said:
!! WARNING !!
There appear to be some hardware problems with the internal hard disk on this device.
Disk realloc sector count is: 384

it could be the hard disk then!
Click to expand...
384 reallocated sectors is not a trivial number but it not necessarily cause to replace the drive (some people have continued to use drives with thousands of reallocated sectors). What are the values of attributes 197 current pending sectors and 198 Offline uncorrectable?
 
197 Current_Pending_Sector -O--C- 0 100 100 000 Old_age Always -
198 Offline_Uncorrectable ----C- 0 100 100 000 Old_age Offline -
 
The warning came up because there are reallocated sectors and the newly-installed CF "thought" there were previously none. Reallocated sectors are not a problem in themselves, they are the HDD doing its thing, but they can be indicative of impending failure if the count is increasing steadily.

Perhaps we should consider whether the warning mechanism is tuned appropriately.
 
I think its safe to say the HDD is on its way out as the reallocated sector count has already gone up by two as of last night (I've not looked this morning it may have gone up by more). At some point in the future it will need replacing - the question is when!
So my options are -
  • Replace the HDD - a Seagate Pipeline ST1000VM002 1TB cost about £60 (I've read on another thread that it's a good HDD and 1TB is plenty for me)
  • Replace the box with a YouView DTR-T1010 - cost about £170. The only reason for considering this is 'her indoors' likes the idea of the 'scroll back' on demand feature and to be honest I got my HDR-Fox T2 from when it was released. one of the reasons for getting it was for the on demand players that were promised but never ever materialised (I still feel bitter about that!)
  • or some other box/system like FreeSat
I would be interested to know if YouView is all its cracked up to be.
2 main things I need is
1. I watch stuff on a network drive can you do that with a YouView box and
2. I live halfway between two transmitters and have to do a manual channel search otherwise I get a load of duplicate channels, so can you do a manual channel search with YouView?
(Maybe I should ask these questions in another thread!)

Or is the HDR-Fox T2 still the box to have?
 
atb said:
Or is the HDR-Fox T2 still the box to have?
Click to expand...
We think so. You can read about the YouView boxes in the appropriate section of this forum.

For what it's worth, my view of universal 7-day catch-up IPTV is that it just encourages laziness (in not pre-planning what to record) and sloth (all one's time spent slumped with the remote trawling thousands of hours of TV instead of "why don't you just turn off the television set and go and do something less boring instead").
 
Last edited:
atb said:
I think its safe to say the HDD is on its way out as the reallocated sector count has already gone up by two as of last night (I've not looked this morning it may have gone up by more). At some point in the future it will need replacing - the question is when!
Click to expand...
My experience (and of course each case may be different) was that the rate of sector reallocation stayed constant at about 4 a day for several months but then began to increase and I replaced the drive when it reached 40 a day.

So my options are -
  • Replace the HDD - a Seagate Pipeline ST1000VM002 1TB cost about £60 (I've read on another thread that it's a good HDD and 1TB is plenty for me)
Click to expand...
  • That was the option I took and after a year the new (2TB drive) has been faultless and so far has zero reallocated sectors.
  • [*]Replace the box with a YouView DTR-T1010 - cost about £170. The only reason for considering this is 'her indoors' likes the idea of the 'scroll back' on demand feature and to be honest I got my HDR-Fox T2 from when it was released. one of the reasons for getting it was for the on demand players that were promised but never ever materialised (I still feel bitter about that!)
    Click to expand...
  • The earlier Youview boxes have a rather slow user interface. The later DTR-2000T is reported to be quicker but I have no personal experience. We have a (non Humax) Youview box but it doesn't get used much because the HDr-FOX T2 is nicer to use.
1. I watch stuff on a network drive can you do that with a YouView box and
Click to expand...
No.
2. I live halfway between two transmitters and have to do a manual channel search otherwise I get a load of duplicate channels, so can you do a manual channel search with YouView?
Click to expand...
No.
 
Thank you all for your sound advice, its very much appreciated.
I think I'm going to keep on with my HDR Fox T2 as I do like it and now with the custom firmware maybe I'll like it even more!

Again many thanks!
 
just a quick note -
I went for the 2TB Seagate Pipeline ST2000VM002 as it was only £8 more than the 1TB
 
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