HDD controller problem?

[Triumph Man]

I've been investigating the HDD problems with my Hummy for a few days now. I have followed the advice in several articles in the forum but I'm still having difficulty.

It all started with the Hummy freezing and displaying a message about being unable to decrypt a recording or something very similar while playing back an HD recording. I restarted it and performed a disk test and the results were strange. The first test failed and then the second test succeeded. After that some of the contents seemed to be there but the Hummy wouldn't play anything. So ... I made a copy of the original HDD onto a spare 1TB drive - we have a caddy at work that can do a block for block copy - and put that in, as a temporary measure. I then installed the custom firmware. To cut a long story short, attempts to repair the file system failed, so I reformatted the copied drive using gptf and reinstalled the custom web interface stuff. It all tested out OK so I left it running overnight as a soak test. However, today I have again got loads of disk errors, even though I haven't recorded anything. Again, attempts to fix it using fixdisk fail. There seem to be loads of bad blocks. I am reasonably confident that the drive is sound - it is a desktop drive, but as it's only a temporary measure I think that doesn't matter - so it looks like it may be a controller or power supply fault. Is there any future in trying to repair the board? I'm aware that if I were to get hold of a second-hand unit, any HD recordings that I might be able to retrieve from the original drive would not be usable. Sorry for the long post, I've tried to give all the relevant info.

 

[Triumph Man]

Well... sadly, no replies on here so I carried on regardless. To check out the Hummy main board, I decided to buy a brand new drive, install that and see if it gave any errors. Unfortunately I didn't do quite enough reading and I bought a WD Purple 3TB drive, only finding out afterwards that it was on the "one to avoid" list. Never mind, I installed it anyway and it seems to be working just fine. It seems that the second (desktop) drive was faulty too. I seem to have lost all the recordings on my original drive, although I have "rescued" those that I could with DiskInternals Linux Reader on my PC. I don't seem to have recovered any .hmt files. Does this mean that they are unrecoverable, even though I have the video files? (I have .nts .thm and .ts files for each recording)

 

[af123]

I somehow missed your original post but would have suspected the board rather than both disks too!

You will be able to recover the recordings as long as you have the .ts files. The sidecar utility can re-create the missing .hmt file. If the recordings are decrypted and have not been stripped it will be also able to pull out the correct EPG information.

It all started with the Hummy freezing and displaying a message about being unable to decrypt a recording

I'm aware that if I were to get hold of a second-hand unit, any HD recordings that I might be able to retrieve from the original drive would not be usable

These two comments seem incompatible. If you have routine decryption enabled then you would be able to transfer the HD recordings with no problem.

 

[Triumph Man]

These two comments seem incompatible. If you have routine decryption enabled then you would be able to transfer the HD recordings with no problem.

Thanks for this reply. At the time of the failure I didn't have the custom firmware installed, so the HD recordings will be encrypted. I have installed it now (obviously, since I have a 3TB drive!). I will give the sidecar utility a try. I'm impressed with the custom firmware. Thanks for all the work.

 

[af123]

At the time of the failure I didn't have the custom firmware installed, so the HD recordings will be encrypted.

Ok, all of the recordings will be encrypted then (SD & HD).
As far as I remember, sidecar can still generate .hmt files for those although they will include dummy information about the channel and programme details. Once you have them you'll be able to decrypt and regenerate the .hmt files again with proper information in them.
(If sidecar can't handle the encrypted files, let us know - there is another more manual way)

 

[Triumph Man]

Ok, all of the recordings will be encrypted then (SD & HD).

Yes, of course, silly me. I'll let you know how I get on.

 

[Triumph Man]

Thanks for the help, af123. I'm now going through my recovered recordings generating the missing .hmt files, copying them back to the primary hard drive, waiting for them to be decrypted and then finally using sidecar again to generate 'proper' hmt files. It's going to take a while!!

At what temperature is the fan supposed to come on? I've installed sysmon and it's showing that the disk temperature has been 49 or 50 degrees for the last day and the fan has been off all the time. But I have got the top off the Hummy and the cupboard door open (it sits on a shelf in a unit under the TV). I wonder if the fan is working, and perhaps the old drive might have failed because it overheated.

 

[af123]

Thanks for the help, af123. I'm now going through my recovered recordings generating the missing .hmt files, copying them back to the primary hard drive, waiting for them to be decrypted and then finally using sidecar again to generate 'proper' hmt files. It's going to take a while!!

Sounds like the process works at least!

If you want to test the fan, install the fan package, reboot and then you can adjust the minimum fan speed through the settings page.

 

[Triumph Man]

If you want to test the fan, install the fan package, reboot and then you can adjust the minimum fan speed through the settings page.

Thanks again, I'll do that when the current 50GB copy operation has finished! Why is it that, despite looking through the available packages in the wiki, I missed that one? I plead old age and incompetence.

 

[Trev]

Try setting the fan min speed to about 50% to start with and monitor the temp, adjusting the fan speed as required. If it's too noisy at that, reduce it for a balance between temp and noise. I can't hear mine at 50% though.