HD-FOX CF Host UPD

Trev said:
You are a glutton for punishment BH...
Click to expand...
...My real punishment is being stupid enough to keep trying to stream HiDef across my HomePlug network between extremities of the house. I usually record in StDef for just that reason (and usually StDef is good enough), or both StDef and HiDef at the same time.

I was out last night until late, and still awake when I got home, so I went to bed and started to watch Strictly (via network-shares-automount) from the new SSD installation (and a reason for it to have been urgent yesterday!). Of course it stuttered and was generally flakey the way I am used to when trying to access HiDef. I could have tried DLNA, as I think it buffers better, but my rescue was to start the WebIF copying the recording across and I was able to start playing it as soon as the copy started - thus the "stream" was being buffered and I could run it a few minutes behind the write point without interruptions.

The real stupidity was not setting the bedroom HD-FOX+SSD to record in parallel with HDR1 and the backup recording on HDR4!
 
Last edited:
Trev said:
But surely the transfer speed should be faster than a whirling dervish HDD?
Click to expand...
You might think that, but the reverse is often true. Cheap USB sticks can be really bad, especially on write performance, and then there is the limited life, which we already know about.
 
Black Hole said:
The three I was supplied with the HDDs (2.5") are quite nice (even if the LED could be toned down a bit). They are an extruded sleeve with a clip-in end plate at one end and a tiny circuit board at the other which plugs into the drive's SATA and presents a USB socket externally. No identification on it though.
Click to expand...
That's exactly the one that I bought in USB3 for £4.95 the other day. £0.95 +£4 pp.:)
 
prpr said:
I had to change one of those this morning because I got a nasty warning about impending disk failure. Only 5500 hours old as well and not had that much wear'n'tear as far as I know. Hope the other machines don't suffer the same fate otherwise I'm going to be a bit narked.
SMART reported:
231 SSD_Life_Left 0x0013 001 001 010 Pre-fail Always FAILING NOW 1
Before it was:
231 SSD_Life_Left 0x0013 098 098 010 Pre-fail Always - 0
Everything else looked happy.
Click to expand...
I've now had 3 out of 9 of the 60GB units fail with the same error. I suspected the first one was not really dead and I haven't (yet) changed the other two.
I see there are now firmware updates available for these drives, one of which fixes problems with SMART. I've got 2 120GB units in service as well - both OK so far. Oh what fun fixing all this is going to be.
The 60GB unit is now on test in my HD with TSR enabled, despite SMART telling me it's going to expire within 24 hours! But the SMART readings are junk - the POH figure is 73151882990830 and there are similar massive figures for some other attributes.
 
Don't go near any air locks!

Nine??!

My experimental unit is currently being thrashed buffering TV virtually 24/7.
 
prpr said:
I've now had 3 out of 9 of the 60GB units fail with the same error.
Click to expand...
Actually I mis-counted and it was 10 units. 5 of them have now failed (with the same non-sensical SMART error - I suspect due to a firmware bug). The 120GB units have been fine so far (touches head).
 
I thought the SSD had broken yesterday, when an attempt to pause just got the "no entry" icon. But no, all that had happened was that the USB connection had been disturbed and needed reconnecting.

16 months @ 24/7 and counting, but the power on hours figure doesn't make sense...

IMG_2192.jpg
 
Trev said:
What, 6 out of 10 SSDs?
Click to expand...
Yes. They were bought to replace failed/failing hard disks as part of an OS upgrade project. Obviously no more have been bought since the first batch started with these bizarre errors.
 
Oh bollox!

I had to disconnect power to HD3 to move it yesterday, and since then the SSD isn't being recognised. I tried it plugged into an HDR to check it's not the HD USB port that's dead, but still no go. I'll have a look around with a disk utility on PC when I get the chance, but I'm not hopeful. If I can't resurrect it I will move on to the metal-cased UPD purchased on af123's recommendation: https://hummy.tv/forum/threads/hd-fox-cf-host-upd.4511/page-6#post-90940

The coincidence with de-powering seems too great to ignore, so maybe the uncontrolled shutdown killed it rather than wearing it out in normal use.

17 months.
 
Could it be the PSU for the external SSD? Some iffy designs, particulalry those with a stated 100-240V input range, can cook the components in the startup circuit on our nominal 230V. They work fine until you power them down, then they won't start.
 
No - it's a small SSD capable of running from the power a USB port offers (much the same as a portable HDD does).
 
Following the "loss" of my SSD, I am going to try out the 64GB Kingston DataTraveller SE9 that I bought following af123's report of the life he's getting out of one. It's proving a pig to set up though. Regard the following as a blog, and maybe those with more knowledge than me can pick some bones out of it (I'm shooting in the dark really):

(Oh bollox - I was going to post my Telnet session but a reboot killed the log! Now I have to report from memory...)

Out of the packet, the SE9 was not recognised when plugged into the HD-FOX. CF Telnet menu reported "no suitable drive for Ext2 conversion". HDR-FOX recognised it though (no contents). I decided to try reformatting it (FAT32), but Win7 won't do that without jumping through hoops. As recommended elsewhere, I downloaded Fat32Formatter, but all that did was complain about a 'collapsed file system' (or something). So I tried "format /FS:FAT32 H:", and after a few hours it decided the drive was too big. :mad:

So I tried a different tack. Plugged the SE9 into the HD-FOX again, and looked to see if it was listed under Menu >> Settings >> System >> Data Storage... it was. So I formatted it with the SUI (to Ext3).

Then I followed the instructions on the wiki here: https://wiki.hummy.tv/wiki/FAQs#How_do_I_convert_a_drive_to_EXT2.3F

The result of "fdisk -l /dev/sda" looked like what I was expecting, so I went on to "umount /dev/sda1" - but from an error message (rather cryptic) I assume it was not mounted anyway.

"tune2fs -O ^has_journal /dev/sda1" reported a 'needs checking' flag was set, and to run e2fsck.

"e2fsck /dev/sda1" produced a whole raft of stuff (y...y...y...), which is where the terminal dump would have been handy. However, at the end I could then run tune2fs again, successfully.

And then I was offered the CF installation stage 2 in the browser.

So, basically, the CF method of preparing a UPD seems too touchy. It would have helped me if it would convert a Humax-formatted drive rather than insisting on FAT32.
 
Oh great. After running the installation, the web access is reporting "no disk found". What now????
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top