Disk keeps going read only

Andy Hurley

Member
I'm not sure how much this may have been discussed before but I have been having trouble with my HDR for the past couple of weeks with it constantly going into a read only mode. The CF fails to to anything useful in this mode as it can't write to any temp files and so throws errors in all sorts of places (including the disk tools) but it works again for a while after a reboot so I was able to produce the output below.

I was running CF 2.11 but I managed to upgrade to 2.19 in order to go into maintenance mode and and run fix-disk. This found and fixed quite a number of problems but the problem of going read only still recurs after this. I'm not certain how to interpret the disk diagnostics below but first impressions are that it doesn't look too bad. It obviously overheated at some point but I have no reallocated sectors.

Can anyone tell me if this looks bad?

I am currently trying to copy off everything important with a view to reformatting but maybe I should get a new disk - any recommendation for the right type to order?

Thanks.

Code:
ID  Name  Flags  Raw Value  Value  Worst  Thresh  Type  Updated  When Failed
1 Raw_Read_Error_Rate  POSR--  66032767 114 99 6 Pre-fail  Always  -
3 Spin_Up_Time  PO----  0 97 97 0 Pre-fail  Always  -
4 Start_Stop_Count  -O--CK  2054 98 98 20 Old_age  Always  -
5 Reallocated_Sector_Ct  PO--CK  0 100 100 36 Pre-fail  Always  -
7 Seek_Error_Rate  POSR--  282377449 84 60 30 Pre-fail  Always  -
9 Power_On_Hours  -O--CK  12901 86 86 0 Old_age  Always  -
10 Spin_Retry_Count  PO--C-  0 100 100 97 Pre-fail  Always  -
12 Power_Cycle_Count  -O--CK  1027 99 99 20 Old_age  Always  -
184 End-to-End_Error  -O--CK  0 100 100 99 Old_age  Always  -
187 Reported_Uncorrect  -O--CK  0 100 100 0 Old_age  Always  -
188 Command_Timeout  -O--CK  0 100 100 0 Old_age  Always  -
189 High_Fly_Writes  -O-RCK  0 100 100 0 Old_age  Always  -
190 Airflow_Temperature_Cel  -O---K  51 49 43 45 Old_age  Always  In_the_past
194 Temperature_Celsius  -O---K  51 51 57 0 Old_age  Always  -
195 Hardware_ECC_Recovered  -O-RC-  66032767  46 38 0 Old_age  Always  -
197 Current_Pending_Sector  -O--C-  0  100 100 0 Old_age  Always  -
198 Offline_Uncorrectable  ----C-  0 100 100 0 Old_age  Offline  -
199 UDMA_CRC_Error_Count  -OSRCK  0 200 200 0 Old_age  Always  -
 
The disk looks okay. Going read-only is usually a symptom of filesystem corruption rather than a physical disk problem, usually caused by the box being powered off while it's running. fix-disk should sort that out for you but might need running a couple of times (until there are no more problems found).
 
Just clear up the 'overheating' you referred to, your disk hasn't overheated, line 190 will display 'Failed in the past' if the hard disk reaches 56 Deg C, this is the temperature that the fan turns on, so this message will be displayed on every hard drive. The maximum temperature your disk has reached is 57 Deg. C (worst in line 194) which is normal
 
The disk looks okay. Going read-only is usually a symptom of filesystem corruption rather than a physical disk problem, usually caused by the box being powered off while it's running. fix-disk should sort that out for you but might need running a couple of times (until there are no more problems found).
Would it be possible to check the filesystems as part of normal boot up before they get mounted and the normal humaxtv process starts?
 
Would it be possible to check the filesystems as part of normal boot up before they get mounted and the normal humaxtv process starts?
It would delay startup too much and would mean that anyone recording using padding would miss the start of their programme. The problem is that the filesystem superblock isn't marked clean on a normal shutdown so every boot would require a full check.
 
OK. There must be a way of detecting read-only partitions though and doing something about them (force a restart and disk check)? If your machine is in this state, then it's not going to record anyway.
 
Thanks for your input guys, so you think it is worth running fix-disk once or twice more?
I guess I will have to give that a try before I go the whole hog and reformat it. My problem at the moment is that it rarely runs for more than a few minutes before going into this read only mode so I am finding myself constantly rebooting at the moment and it is our sole tuner on our main sitting-room TV so I am unpopular when I take it into maintenance mode - I will have to choose my timing carefully.

My guess is that it was the storms last week that triggered this. I know the power went off at least twice and probably rather more than that, possibly only for a few seconds at a time, at very least it would have been recording the live buffer at these times. Since we were not at home I can't be sure exactly when it went off and what else it might have been doing. I did start running auto-decrypt recursively at about the same time so the disk would have been busy over night and this may have been another trigger - I have disabled this again for now. My initial thoughts were that this was what had corrupted the disk but I am now veering towards the power failure scenario.
 
...usually caused by the box being powered off while it's running...

...My guess is that it was the storms last week that triggered this. I know the power went off at least twice and probably rather more than that, possibly only for a few seconds at a time, at very least it would have been recording the live buffer at these times....

Well, the jigsaw pieces fit together nicely.
 
Well, the jigsaw pieces fit together nicely.
Indeed.
:)
That said, power cuts are not unusual in our village owing to the dangly overhead power lines running up the road, being hit by footballs and waving around in high winds. Not had a problem before with the Humax though or I might have considered powering it down when we went away for the weekend.

I wonder if it is a combination of the power cut with the use of tools like auto-decrypt which are maybe less resilient to shutting down in the middle of a file copy than the regular recording.
 
I wasn't trying to be flippant, obviously a problem like this is a real pain.

Have you considered a 'cheap' UPS? Something that will give you a chance to power down the Humax in a controlled manner.

This will assume that you are near the Humax when the issue arises. Or to to take it to a different level, depending on the UPS, you could have it email you on a power outage so you can then 'remote in' to the Humax and at least put it in standby. It's getting complicated now! You Internet connection will need power protection too!
 
I have considered a UPS but really I think that would be overkill, it would not be able to record unless I also put UPS on the aerial distribution and it would not be able to email unless I put UPS on the router and hubs. In this case it would not have helped in any case as I could not have got to it in time to shut down properly. It does all run through surge protectors though...

The good news is that I was able to run fix-disk twice more last night and the second time it ran clean. So far it recorded Quantum of Solace, did all it's nighttime updates etc and was still working properly this morning. Fingers crossed it may be fixed.

Thanks everyone for your help and suggestions.
 
I had a problem several months ago caused by successive power cuts. (2nd cut was about a minute after power was restored from the first one, so HDR was half way through booting up). The symptoms were different - the box would boot, crash, then reboot and then appear stable for a while. The cause turned out to be a corrupt DLNA database, rebuilding it solved the problem, so it may be worth rebuilding yours to rule that out as a source of the problem. I do now have a small UPS.

Original post: http://hummy.tv/forum/threads/southern-electric-have-made-my-hdr-crash.2668/
 
@Andy Hurley
I am glad that it appears you have sorted it out now. I realise that it really depends on your setup as to whether a UPS was practical/cost effective. I was thinking it through as I typed.
 
Just thought it was worth posting a follow on, four days on and no further troubles.

Thanks again for your input everyone :D
 
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