Hard disk fault

[JoeBloggs911]

One of my boxes woke up this morning with a big red hard disk fault warning, indicating pending sector count and offline sector count both at 1. Disk diags confirmed this, so I restarted in maintenance mode and ran fixdisk with no parameters. It identified the bad block and reported "The following file contains a corrupt block and can not be fully recovered. You may wish to delete it or recover from backup". Unfortunately, it did not name the file. Fixdisk eventually completed with errorlevel 0. I rebooted in normal mode and ran disk diags again with this result:

Total space: 447.6 GiB
Used: 20.65 GiB (4%)
Free: 426.95 GiB (96%)
Dustbin: 4 KiB (0%)   
Restart required. Reboot now 
Humax HDR Fox T2 (humax2) - Diagnostics 
...
Loading...
{[remote.png]
Remote }   {[323_1_10_Menu_Video.png]
Browse }   {[Menu_CHList.png]
Schedule }   {[328_1_26_Menu_TV_Guide.png]
EPG }   {[spanner.png]
Services }   {[packages.png]
Packages }   {[326_1_00_Menu_Settings.png]
Settings }   {[diagnostics.png]
Diag }   {[queuep128.png]
Queue }   {[icon256.png]
Sweeper }   {[icon.png]
Sysmon }   
SMART data read from device /dev/sdc
Disk Information 
SMART Status  PASSED   
Model Family    Seagate Pipeline HD 5900.2
Device Model    ST3500312CS
Serial Number    9VVDJ001
LU WWN Device Id    5 000c50 06436deac
Firmware Version    SC13
User Capacity    500,107,862,016 bytes [500 GB]
Sector Size    512 bytes logical/physical
Rotation Rate    5900 rpm
Device is    In smartctl database [for details use: -P show]
ATA Version is    ATA8-ACS T13/1699-D revision 4
SATA Version is    SATA 2.6, 3.0 Gb/s (current: 3.0 Gb/s)
Local Time is    Sat Mar 23 14:46:59 2019 GMT
SMART support is    Available - device has SMART capability.
SMART support is    Enabled
Attributes 
ID   Name   Flags   Raw Value   Value   Worst   Threshold   Life Left   Notes 
1   Raw_Read_Error_Rate   POSR--   37197683   111   072   006      - 
3   Spin_Up_Time   PO----   0   097   097   000      - 
4   Start_Stop_Count   -O--CK   9218   091   091   020   89%   - 
5   Reallocated_Sector_Ct   PO--CK   0   100   100   036   100%   - 
7   Seek_Error_Rate   POSR--   814947174   089   060   030      - 
9   Power_On_Hours   -O--CK   32186   064   064   000   64%   - 
10   Spin_Retry_Count   PO--C-   0   100   100   097   100%   - 
12   Power_Cycle_Count   -O--CK   4610   096   096   020   95%   - 
184   End-to-End_Error   -O--CK   0   100   100   099      - 
187   Reported_Uncorrect   -O--CK   4074   001   001   000      - 
188   Command_Timeout   -O--CK   0   100   100   000      - 
189   High_Fly_Writes   -O-RCK   1   099   099   000      - 
190   Airflow_Temperature_Cel   -O---K   38   062 (38°C)   044 (56°C)   045 (55°C)      In_the_past 
194   Temperature_Celsius   -O---K   38   038   056   000      - 
195   Hardware_ECC_Recovered   -O-RC-   37197683   046   034   000      - 
197   Current_Pending_Sector   -O--C-   0   100   100   000      - 
198   Offline_Uncorrectable   ----C-   0   100   100   000      - 
199   UDMA_CRC_Error_Count   -OSRCK   0   200   200   000      - 
Self-test logs 
No.   Description   Status   Remaining   When   First Error LBA 
# 1   Short offline   Completed without error   00%   32186   - 
# 2   Short offline   Completed without error   00%   32185   - 
# 3   Short offline   Completed without error   00%   32183   - 
# 4   Short offline   Completed without error   00%   32181   - 
# 5   Extended offline   Interrupted (host reset)   00%   32181   - 
# 6   Short offline   Completed without error   00%   32181   - 
# 7   Short offline   Completed without error   00%   32180   - 
# 8   Short offline   Completed: read failure   90%   32180   272903400 
# 9   Short offline   Completed without error   00%   28360   - 
#10   Short offline   Completed without error   00%   28360   - 
#11   Short offline   Completed: read failure   90%   28360   2175084 
#12   Short offline   Completed: read failure   90%   28360   2175084 
#13   Short offline   Completed: read failure   90%   28360   2175084 
#14   Short offline   Completed without error   00%   16860   - 
#15   Short offline   Completed without error   00%   16287   - 
#16   Short offline   Completed without error   00%   16280   - 
#17   Short offline   Completed without error   00%   15758   - 
#18   Short offline   Completed without error   00%   2378   - 
#19   Short offline   Interrupted (host reset)   00%   2377   - 
#20   Short offline   Interrupted (host reset)   00%   2377   - 
Acknowledge any current disk faults.
Rendered in: 0.617 seconds

I thought it might be a good idea to reformat the drive, so I backed up all the recordings to an external drive and tried the built-in Humax format. This failed with a "capacity too large" error. The drive is an original 500Gb.

Is there anything I need to do to sort out the errors in the above disk diags report. Is there any advantage in a gptf format of such a small drive?

 

[af123]

Is there anything I need to do to sort out the errors in the above disk diags report.

Which errors? The log at the bottom is in reverse time order and the most recent entries completed successfully.
The other attributes look ok.

 

[JoeBloggs911]

That's a relief. But for future reference, is gpt formatting applicable or useful for a 500Gb drive?

Incidentally, it occurs to me that my earlier description of it as "such a small drive" is absurd, when I consider that my first PC had a pair of single-sided 160k floppies controlled by MS-DOS 1.25!

 

[Black Hole]

But for future reference, is gpt formatting applicable or useful for a 500Gb drive?

Applicable: yes; useful: no.

I see no need to make the disk format invalid for the standard Humax system (as it would be if you reverted to standard firmware for some reason). The purpose of GPT is to make disk capacities over 2TB accessible, and requires the CF for compatibility.

 

[MymsMan]

I thought it might be a good idea to reformat the drive, so I backed up all the recordings to an external drive and tried the built-in Humax format. This failed with a "capacity too large" error. The drive is an original 500Gb.

Why
With only a single block error that has been fixed reformatting seems excessive.
Don't know why reformat failed but it is a problem that isnt worth solving at the moment

 

[JoeBloggs911]

Which errors? The log at the bottom is in reverse time order and the most recent entries completed successfully.
The other attributes look ok.

There's definitely something seriously wrong with the drive or something else on the box. Sometime after my first post above, I noticed that the epg was scrambled. I thought a reboot might help but this time I got the Humax's HDD must be formatted message. I exited that and booted into maintenance mode and ran fixdisk again. This time, it showed:


I exited maintenance mode and on restart accepted the box's offer to reformat, which it did successfully. I copied back some of my recordings and they play OK.

The CF then prompted me to download the full web interface. I've tried three times each time ending in failure:

Downloading http://hpkg.tv/hdrfoxt2/base/jim-cgi_0.7-1_mipsel.opk.
Configuring ncurses.
Configuring libreadline.
Configuring sqlite3.
Configuring swapper.
Configuring busybox.
Configuring ca-bundle.
Configuring openssl.
Configuring libpcre.
Configuring service-control.
Configuring lighttpd.
Configuring tcpfix.
Configuring webif-channelicons.
Configuring jim.
Configuring jim-sqlite3.
Configuring jim-oo.
Collected errors:
* opkg_download: Failed to download http://hpkg.tv/hdrfoxt2/base/jim-cgi_0.7-1_mipsel.opk, wget returned 1.
* opkg_install_pkg: Failed to download jim-cgi. Perhaps you need to run 'opkg update'?
* opkg_install_cmd: Cannot install package webif.

Error installing packages. Please try again.

What now?

 

[JoeBloggs911]

What now?

I was able to install the full webif after five attempts. Restored optional packages and all settings to their former state (thank God for browser split-screen, allowing checking settings on 2nd box). Copied back remaining recordings from backup. Hoping it'll last this time.

 

[prpr]

I thought it might be a good idea to reformat the drive

Why? Based on what reasoning? You already fixed the problem. So you decided to create yourself some more...

This failed with a "capacity too large" error. The drive is an original 500Gb.

That's the fault of brain-dead programmers at Humax, who only have one error message for all possible errors. The size of the drive is irrelevant.

Is there anything I need to do to sort out the errors in the above disk diags report.

What errors?

Is there any advantage in a gptf format of such a small drive?

GPTF is partitioning, not formatting. And the answer is no.

my earlier description of it as "such a small drive" is absurd, when I consider that my first PC had a pair of single-sided 160k floppies

Everything's relative. You need to move on.

 

[Black Hole]

GPTF is partitioning, not formatting.

It's all a format, even if not what is generally meant when formatting a partition. Setting up a disk from scratch, as opposed to just re-formatting a partition, requires partitioning the disk and then formatting the partitions. It's not unreasonable to talk about the whole process as formatting.

What's "GPTF" anyway? It's GUID Partition Table (GUID = Globally Unique Identifier), ie GPT, so if you stuck an F on the end thinking "format" you've fallen into your own trap.

 

[af123]

GPT and MBR are partition table formats, ext3 is a filesystem format, format is just an arrangement of data, no conflict here.

gptf comes from the name of the item in the telnet menu.

 

[prpr]

It's all a format, even if not what is generally meant when formatting a partition. Setting up a disk from scratch, as opposed to just re-formatting a partition, requires partitioning the disk and then formatting the partitions. It's not unreasonable to talk about the whole process as formatting.

I disagree. It's just sloppiness in terminology, and you've fallen into the trap.
Partitioning is writing a partition table. Formatting is creating a filesystem (most often in a partition).

What's "GPTF" anyway? It's GUID Partition Table (GUID = Globally Unique Identifier), ie GPT, so if you stuck an F on the end thinking "format" you've fallen into your own trap

It was somebody else's trap, not mine, although I will admit I was sucked in to replicating it.

 

[Black Hole]

You'll have to disagree with at least two of us then. But it is just semantics.