Disk Fail (?) and replacing disks

[cdmackay]

thanks both; I wasn't entirely happy, and had it been sooner, I would have contacted Humax.

However, owing to inertia, it had been sitting in its box for a year after I bought it (as a replacement for a Toppy which carried on longer than expected, before expiring in a power-cut last month). So it's out of warranty already. Foolish of me not to have checked it.

I have two more G-graded, bought recently; one as a second system, and one as a spare, and will be checking both asap.

 

[jack616]

I think perhaps the most important mod we can all do is to drill large numbers of holes in that suprising plastic caddy
the drives cook themselves in - and maybe in the case above it. Or perhaps install a secondary fan.
The numbers of drive problems I'm seeing reported in this forum are entirely at odds with my nearly 30 years experience of hard drives.
(Some of those years specifically related to hard drives in a professional engineering capacity)
If a drive isnt handled very roughly it should be lasting decades without any issues not a couple of years before dying.

 

[Ezra Pound]

If the Humax didn't have a fan I would probably agree that more 'air holes' are better, but the plastic caddy forms a connection between the fan to the Hard Disk, if you remove the caddy (or parts of it) the fan will have less cooling effect on the hard disk which will run hotter

 

[Black Hole]

The numbers of drive problems I'm seeing reported in this forum are entirely at odds with my nearly 30 years experience of hard drives.

It's a skewed sample, so don't take it as representative of the proportion of people who have experienced problems - you only get to hear about it when they do.

That said, these drives have much higher operational hours than the typical PC drive.

 

[af123]

I think Humax deliberately set up the fan control to try and maximise the number of occasions when the box runs silently (or at least, without any fan noise) and, as a result, the disks run quite hot and undergo fairly large temperature changes. Still well within the specs for the drives but doesn't feel good for longevity.

 

[jack616]

It's a skewed sample, so don't take it as representative of the proportion of people who have experienced problems - you only get to hear about it when they do.
That said, these drives have much higher operational hours than the typical PC drive.

Indeed - but skewed in the other direction which only makes matters worse - which is why I thought I'd mention it.
Most people just throw out faulty equipment.
Of those that dont they take it back to the shop to get it repaired.
The majority of people wouldnt consider using the web to fix a broken PVR
Of those that do there are other web sites
Which leaves a tiny minority using this site.
Which makes the number of reports significant.

As a (lapsed) member of the OR society (http://www.theorsociety.com/) - "data skew" is a natural thought to me
In terms of hours use - The mtbf figures probably wouldn't support that as an issue over 2 years much less my experience.
I still maintain too high a failure rate.

I wonder if RS still do those cute thermal stickers...

 

[Ezra Pound]

The Custom Firmware has an updated version of the RS Thermal sticker, in the form of the Sysmon tools 'Worst' disk temperature SMART line 194, but just in case your are missing the old method here is an RS sticker I'm still using (not attached to the Humax though)

 

[jack616]

That's them - they also did a fixed failure at set temp. indicator.
They helped me solve a very sticky problem once.
If the Humax was a new piece of kit I think I'd be sticking them in various places - especially near the PSU caps
not just the drives.

 

[Umpa]

This is what my smart says.


Attributes
ID Name Flags Raw Value Value Worst Thresh Type Updated When Failed
1 Raw_Read_Error_Rate POSR-- 27111727 110 099 006 Pre-fail Always -
3 Spin_Up_Time PO---- 0 097 097 000 Pre-fail Always -
4 Start_Stop_Count -O--CK 4228 096 096 020 Old_age Always -
5 Reallocated_Sector_Ct PO--CK 0 100 100 036 Pre-fail Always -
7 Seek_Error_Rate POSR-- 137636242 081 060 030 Pre-fail Always -
9 Power_On_Hours -O--CK 12543 086 086 000 Old_age Always -
10 Spin_Retry_Count PO--C- 0 100 100 097 Pre-fail Always -
12 Power_Cycle_Count -O--CK 2114 098 098 020 Old_age Always -
184 End-to-End_Error -O--CK 0 100 100 099 Old_age Always -
187 Reported_Uncorrect -O--CK 0 100 100 000 Old_age Always -
188 Command_Timeout -O--CK 0 100 100 000 Old_age Always -
189 High_Fly_Writes -O-RCK 3 097 097 000 Old_age Always -
190 Airflow_Temperature_Cel -O---K 52 048 041 045 Old_age Always In_the_past
194 Temperature_Celsius -O---K 52 052 059 000 Old_age Always -
195 Hardware_ECC_Recovered -O-RC- 27111727 035 028 000 Old_age Always -
197 Current_Pending_Sector -O--C- 0 100 100 000 Old_age Always -
198 Offline_Uncorrectable ----C- 0 100 100 000 Old_age Offline -
199 UDMA_CRC_Error_Count -OSRCK 0 200 200 000 Old_age Always -

 

[prpr]

This is what my smart says.

Nothing wrong with that.