Hard drive possibly dead

L

Londoner

New Member
My machine became very slow and unresponsive recently and today I received an email from the Hummypkg Remote Scheduling app to say that the hard disk had errors.

I managed to log in to Webif and run a diagnostic on the hard disk. There's a screenshot on the link below:
https://1drv.ms/i/s!AsRkKAake827jJkUsMZU8lp9usmA4g

I then used Telnet to go into Maintenance mode and ran Fixdisk. That didn't work and I got the following message:
Umount: Can't unmount /mnt/hd2:
Device or resource busy
fix-disk: session terminated with exit status 1.

It looks like my hard disk is beyond saving but I'd be grateful for another opinion from the experienced hands on here. Many thanks.
 
You disk is certainly not dead and barely has man flu!

1 sector failing is not terminal and for most people wouldn't be noticeable, but a problem in a frequently accessed file can indeed bring the system to a crawl.

The unmount error message is due to a problem in the customised firmware and doesn't indicate a problem with the disk.

You don't indicate what firmware level you are using but there have been significant improvement to the fix disk, including removing the unmount error, in the latest version. I would suggest downloading and installing the latest CFW and then trying fixdisk again
 
The 100 entries in 197 & 198 are exactly what one of our boxes has had for ages - a year, maybe two. It's still going fine (occasional glitches/resets like they all seem to do) without those counts changing, and it's the most heavily used of our three as well. I'd ignore it until/unless something like actual failures start to occur, or the counts start to increase in a relentless fashion.
 
Many thanks for the responses, especially MymsMan.

Update: my CFW version was 3.00, so I upgraded to 3.13, ran fixdisk and all was well!

One little quirk which I encountered: I had been running Humax official version 1.03.12 along with the CFW with no issues. I therefore opted to install the CFW update 3.13 designed for 1.03.12, however, this resulted in a boot up loop. I then installed CFW 1.02.32/3.13 and that cured the problem.

After resolving the hard disk issue I then tried again to install CFW 1.03.12/3.13 but that again resulted in a boot up loop. I wonder why my machine has suddenly taken against version 1.03.12? I'm not that bothered but would like to know the reason out of interest. For reference, it has the two RF ports side by side rather than vertical.
 
Londoner said:
I therefore opted to install the CFW update 3.13 designed for 1.03.12, however, this resulted in a boot up loop. I then installed CFW 1.02.32/3.13 and that cured the problem.
Click to expand...
Could you describe exactly what was happening during the "boot up loop"?
 
So you have the original hardware.

I don't recall hearing of this happening before. Either it's a coincidence, or (to find something to blame) there's some kind of fault only triggered by the exact circumstances of address or timing with the CF version. You could try the diagnostic procedures given here: Steps for Resolving HDR-FOX Crash/Reboot Issues (click).

Without 1.03.xx you have no access to the TV Portal.
 
When booting in 1.03.12/3.13 the Humax logo appears, there's a greeny yellow 'flash' under it and the screen goes black, with the Humax logo appearing again shortly afterwards. This cycle reoccurs non stop until I insert the USB drive containing 1.02.32/3.13. Installing this version results in a normal boot up and operation. It's odd as the machine happily booted from 1.03.12/3.00 for three years.

I've read that version 1.03.12 resolves a potential issue with recording padding and HD recording with BBC4, so I'd like to install that version if possible. I'll have a look at the reboot issues thread.
 
Many (most?) of us are using 1.03.12/3.13 without problems, I would suggest downloading a fresh copy and trying to install again.
Normally you should use the version without a suffix letter but you could try the stock kernel version with k suffix to see if that makes a difference
af123 would need to advise on whether to try the debug kernel and what debugging information to collect.
 
Londoner said:
When booting in 1.03.12/3.13 the Humax logo appears, there's a greeny yellow 'flash' under it and the screen goes black, with the Humax logo appearing again shortly afterwards. This cycle reoccurs non stop until I insert the USB drive containing 1.02.32/3.13.
Click to expand...
I would try the System Flush Update File (downloadable from the same page as the custom firmware).
 
Good news - before trying the System Flush Update I thought I'd re-download version 1.03.12/3.13 and install it again. This time it booted up fine. Thanks again for the guidance.

I find the CFW very useful and it's proved its worth today in fixing my hard disk. Presumably, with a more modern machine and no custom firmware you're stuck if a similar hard disk fault were to develop? Or do they incorporate automatic self-repairing tools?
 
Londoner said:
I find the CFW very useful and it's proved its worth today in fixing my hard disk. Presumably, with a more modern machine and no custom firmware you're stuck if a similar hard disk fault were to develop? Or do they incorporate automatic self-repairing tools?
Click to expand...
AFAIK fix disk just uses a combination of readily available Linux utilities to analyse and fix problems so potentially you would be able to to take the disk out of another PVR and attach it to a linux machine and run the tools.
But unless you have a handy linux machine and knowledge of which tools to run then
Black Hole said:
You would be stuffed, other than to reformat and lose all existing recordings.
Click to expand...
 
MymsMan said:
But unless you have a handy linux machine and knowledge of which tools to run then
Click to expand...
Or use a use a Linux Live CD.

I had an error in the area used by the CFW which meant I couldn't use its tools to sort it. Simply connecting the HDD to a PC running a booted from a Linux live CD sorted the problem without any intervention from me. It's reported here somewhere.
 
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