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HDD failure help

C

confabulator

Member
Hi,

Hope someone is out there to give me some help as soon as possible. I am on custom firmware 3.03.

Just returned from holiday with kids desperate to watch recordings to get an HDD error:

"The HDD storage must be formatted to use recording functions. Press OK to go to Data Storage menu"

Data storage shows no HDD memory is available. Running HDD Test gives:

"HDD Test Fail
You may recover the HDD through Format Storage (Error code : 8)"

So I tried to go into custom firmware with the idea to use Fix-it but this also fails giving:

"To install the full web interface and supporting packages a suitably formatted internal hard disk must be present and none was detected.

If the system has only recently been started, it could still be initialising - refresh this page to try again.

If the problem persists, there could be a problem with the internal disk. For help, please visit the Hummy.tv forums"

I don't know what to do next. The HDD also sounds quiet after an initial whirr. I really don't want this to be hard drive failure and to lose everything on the box.
 
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confabulator said:
So I tried to go into custom firmware with the idea to use Fix-it but this also fails giving:

"To install the full web interface and supporting packages a suitably formatted internal hard disk must be present and none was detected.
Click to expand...
You don't need the full web interface to run fix-disk (not fix-it) and you connect via telnet. Try reading http://wiki.hummy.tv/wiki/Maintenance_Mode_Disk_Check (note there is a link to help on telnet). I would also suggest updating to the latest custom firmware which has improvements to fix-disk.
 
Sorry to be annoying but I have never run fix-disc before and if you are still there you can hopefully reassure me.

Fix-disc started well and corrected a couple of seemingly minor errors. It has now moved onto pass 1 : checking inodes, blocks and sizes on partition /dev/sda2 and has stalled for over 20 mins showing \12.8%

Is that normal? I realise these things can be lengthy. It looks like the same process on sda1 was quick.
 
Last edited:
confabulator said:
Sorry to be annoying but I have never run fix-disc before and if you are still there you can hopefully reassure me.

Fix-disc started well and corrected a couple of seemingly minor errors. It has now moved onto pass 1 : checking inodes, blocks and sizes on partition /dev/sda2 and has stalled for over 20 mins showing \12.8%

Is that normal? I realise these things can be lengthy. It looks like the same process on sda1 was quick.
Click to expand...
sda1 is small, sda2 is the partition where the recordings are held and is much bigger. Be patient, very patient; make sure neither the Humax or the PC will go into standby until the process is complete. It could take many hours (somebody recently reported 5 days but I think that is exceptional) if the file system is badly damaged.
 
confabulator said:
thanks
Click to expand...

I have two HDR's in daily use. I do a maintenance 'fix-disk' check now and then. One box takes a couple of hours to complete, the other 30 minutes. The tests come back clear. Both units have a 1TB HDD but one disk is 75% full the other 10%.
 
Thanks guys. The delay ended as I posted last and everything was progressive from there.

Happy to report fix-disc rocks and everything now works fine. Would like to take my chance to pass on thanks to all the developers of the custom firmware and all the associated features/packages that rock too as well as the for the support provided on here. I thought I had posted before today but it seems not. I have though used the information here plenty before and appreciate it.

As I am no longer scared of using fix-disc I may well run a check intermittently, there were some signs for a while the HDD wasn't running so well and I have considered it but not done it.
 
confabulator said:
there were some signs for a while the HDD wasn't running so well and I have considered it but not done it.
Click to expand...
Perhaps you should post the output from the Disk Diagnostics under Diagnostics in the custom firmware web interface and we can offer advice on the health of the drive. Did you upgrade to the latest custom firmware? If not now would be a good time to do it.
 
Yes I did update to latest firmware before running fix-disc.

The disc diagnostic page shows this:


ID Name Flags Raw Value Value Worst Thresh Type Updated When Failed
1 Raw_Read_Error_Rate POSR-- 237183083 105 099 006 Pre-fail Always -
3 Spin_Up_Time PO---- 0 095 093 000 Pre-fail Always -
4 Start_Stop_Count -O--CK 11120 090 090 020 Old_age Always -
5 Reallocated_Sector_Ct PO--CK 1067 074 074 036 Pre-fail Always -
7 Seek_Error_Rate POSR-- 17732855230 081 060 030 Pre-fail Always -
9 Power_On_Hours -O--CK 24545 072 072 000 Old_age Always -
10 Spin_Retry_Count PO--C- 0 100 100 097 Pre-fail Always -
12 Power_Cycle_Count -O--CK 5561 095 095 020 Old_age Always -
184 End-to-End_Error -O--CK 0 100 100 099 Old_age Always -
187 Reported_Uncorrect -O--CK 545 001 001 000 Old_age Always -
188 Command_Timeout -O--CK 0 100 100 000 Old_age Always -
189 High_Fly_Writes -O-RCK 277 001 001 000 Old_age Always -
190 Airflow_Temperature_Cel -O---K 54 046 036 045 Old_age Always In_the_past
194 Temperature_Celsius -O---K 54 054 064 000 Old_age Always -
195 Hardware_ECC_Recovered -O-RC- 237183083 048 037 000 Old_age Always -
197 Current_Pending_Sector -O--C- 0 100 100 000 Old_age Always -
198 Offline_Uncorrectable ----C- 0 100 100 000 Old_age Offline -
199 UDMA_CRC_Error_Count -OSRCK 0 200 200 000 Old_age Always -
Self-test logs
No. Description Status Remaining When First Error LBA
# 1 Short offline Completed without error 00% 24540 -
# 2 Short offline Completed: read failure 90% 24540 4225
# 3 Short offline Completed: read failure 90% 24540 4225
# 4 Short offline Completed: read failure 90% 24540 4225
# 5 Short offline Completed: read failure 90% 24540 4225
# 6 Short offline Completed: read failure 90% 24540 4225
# 7 Short offline Completed without error 00% 19484 -
# 8 Short offline Completed without error 00% 13132 -
# 9 Short offline Completed without error 00% 4772 -

Not sure if you want that or another output?
Rendered in: 0.807 seconds
 
confabulator said:
Not sure if you want that or another output?
Click to expand...
That is the one. Reallocated sector count is getting a bit high. My advice would be to keep an eye on it and when the average daily rate of sector reallocations gets above about 10 per day then time to consider replacing it.
 
Your hard drive has almost 25000 hours on the clock, so it is getting on a bit. It also has over a thousand reallocated sectors. As long as this value stays stable the disk should be OK for a while yet, but I suggest it is time to start thinking about replacing it.
 
Thanks guys. I was thinking I should probably do that as I've known the reallocated sector count has been rising consistently for a while and now this failure today. I don't use the custom firmware often in truth so hard to have a feel for how many per day. I dont think it would average 10 per day though.

In terms of HDD replacement and copying off the current recordings to a new drive which way would you go about that? I decrypt at times to copy off some stuff for kids travel watching. I'm thinking if I decrypt the drive now my task will be simpler to copy to a new drive. Haven't worked out yet how I'm going to do that though.
 
confabulator said:
I was thinking I should probably do that as I've known the reallocated sector count has been rising consistently for a while and now this failure today.
Click to expand...
I don't like the look of your disk stats. It may last a bit longer, but you're going to have to replace it at some point, so why not do it before you have a catastrophic failure?
In terms of HDD replacement and copying off the current recordings to a new drive which way would you go about that?
Click to expand...
See this thread from only yesterday.
I'm thinking if I decrypt the drive now my task will be simpler to copy to a new drive.
Click to expand...
You don't need to just to change the disk. And lots of writes, which decrypting everything will generate, may break your disk even more. I would caution against it at this point.
 
Thanks prpr, I agree (but hopefully don't have to do it within extreme urgency).

The USB disc caddy idea I hadn't thought of as I've never used one. The other way I guess would be to FTP the files to PC and back again, correct?

I take your point about decrypting and in truth I dont need to do this unless I want to play the recordings on another device (and I don't or would decrypt and stream them from PC already) so will avoid it.
 
confabulator said:
The other way I guess would be to FTP the files to PC and back again, correct?
Click to expand...
You could, but it'll take twice as long.
I take your point about decrypting and in truth I dont need to do this unless I want to play the recordings on another device (and I don't or would decrypt and stream them from PC already) so will avoid it.
Click to expand...
I recommend you do decrypt everything, to guard against machine failure. Just not at the moment. Once you have your new disk, then that would be the time to turn on the recursive auto-decrypt (and make sure you keep an eye on disk space if over half full!).
 
Thanks again.

Thinking about it I am sure I could open one of my redundant external HDD drives to use as a caddy, cant see why I shouldnt. As for the new drive its clear that my 1TB has been replaceable by 2TB for some time. Do you know or any to avoid? The spindle speed for the drive that came with the T2 is 5400 but drives seem to be mainly 7200 now. Any issues known with that?

I am considering:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Seagate-Desktop-inch-Internal-Drive/dp/B008FXHKVQ
 
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confabulator said:
I dont think it would average 10 per day though.
Click to expand...
Clearly every failure case is different but what I saw when I deliberately kept a disk going for longer than was sensible was that the rate of reallocation of sectors kept increasing until the break up in the picture with each reallocation was getting irritating. I don't think there is an immediate rush to replace the hard drive but if you don't feel inclined to monitor it then it would be safer to replace it in the near future.
 
Interesting and can get it cheap too (ah just noticed cheap was 1TB) . People tell me though that AV hard drives aren't necessary these days, I take it you disagree?
 
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