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HDR-1800T record/playback problems.

B

Bigphil

New Member
Hi all,
My Hummy is giving me grief.
On play back it suddenly stops,goes blank and reports 'this channel is not available or encrypted' and no buttons on the remote do anything. The only way to recover the situation is to unplug it from the mains, wait a bit, re-power it and delete the recording. In addition to this although some recordings state the correct time of the file it stops prematurely and goes blank during playback.
I have re-formatted the drive several times and done a HDD check, no errors reported, but it has not sorted the problem.

The Loader version is UKTFAC 1.04 and the software version is UKTFAC 1.01.20 which I believe is the latest.

Have any of you clever people got any ideas or do I throw in the bin with the rest of the rubbish and buy something that works (not a Humax).

Regards

Phil.
 
The HDD check is next to useless. I'm sure someone will be able to point you in the direction of a more rigorous test.
When you formatted the HDD did you do a Factory Default? If not it might be worth trying as this should clear out any rubbish stored in non-volatile memory. How long did you power down for? Under the circumstances I'd give it at least 30 minutes.
 
Bigphil said:
Have any of you clever people got any ideas or do I throw in the bin with the rest of the rubbish and buy something that works (not a Humax).
Click to expand...
That's rather unfair. I presume you've had this for some time, and now if it's reached end-of-life you think Humax is worse than anything else?

Recordings become "scrambled" not because of anything to do with the HDD, but when the unit forgets what its decryption key is. It finds it can't decrypt the data to anything sensible, and assumes that's because the recording was not available for you to decrypt in the first place. Rebooting it refreshes the decryption key.

If the unit is persistently forgetting the key, that implies an age-related fault has developed in the decryption hardware.
 
Black Hole said:
Rebooting it refreshes the decryption key.

If the unit is persistently forgetting the key, that implies an age-related fault has developed in the decryption hardware.
Click to expand...
Although I only occasionally use my 200OT for recording a film, usually on BBC1/2HD* (no DOGs), I've mainly moved on and forgotten previous problems - although that could be age related and/or my slapdash approach to documenting problems and solutions. I have the vaguest recollection of a similar problem to Bigphil's a long time ago. A Factory Default and a long power off appears to have cured it.
(* It's easy to copy HiDef off the 2000T - Foxy works. It isn't easy on later models.)
 
Bigphil said:
I have re-formatted the drive several times and done a HDD check, no errors reported, but it has not sorted the problem.
Click to expand...
I don't have an 1800/2000T but I suspect your drive might have physical problems which the above doesn't detect or fix.
As a start, you need to investigate the SMART stats. on it, which means extracting it from the unit and connecting it to a PC.
 
EEPhil said:
The HDD check is next to useless. I'm sure someone will be able to point you in the direction of a more rigorous test.
When you formatted the HDD did you do a Factory Default? If not it might be worth trying as this should clear out any rubbish stored in non-volatile memory. How long did you power down for? Under the circumstances I'd give it at least 30 minutes.
Click to expand...
Thanks for your reply.
The first time I formatted the HDD I did a Factory Default but not the second time.
I only powered down for a couple of minutes, however on re-power the unit responded to the remote but the recording still done the same thing hence I deleted it.
Black Hole said:
That's rather unfair. I presume you've had this for some time, and now if it's reached end-of-life you think Humax is worse than anything else?

Recordings become "scrambled" not because of anything to do with the HDD, but when the unit forgets what its decryption key is. It finds it can't decrypt the data to anything sensible, and assumes that's because the recording was not available for you to decrypt in the first place. Rebooting it refreshes the decryption key.

If the unit is persistently forgetting the key, that implies an age-related fault has developed in the decryption hardware.
Click to expand...
My first Freeview PVR was a Panasonic (I forget the model number) which I bought early 2010 when freeview first came to this area. It never 'missed a beat'. However eventually the hard Drive packed up in early 2023 so I thought that instead of fitting a new drive I would treat myself to a new recorder (a decision i'm regretting now). That is when I bought the Humax. Unfortunately the problem didn't manifest itself until the guarantee had expired otherwise I would have taken it back and demanded my money back.
Seeing as the Panasonic lasted for 13 years I wouldn't expect the Humax to reached end of life after nearly 3 years.
 
prpr said:
I don't have an 1800/2000T but I suspect your drive might have physical problems which the above doesn't detect or fix.
As a start, you need to investigate the SMART stats. on it, which means extracting it from the unit and connecting it to a PC.
Click to expand...
Would you or somebody on the Forum explain further as I don't know what SMART stats mean.
I seem to remember that Humax drives are formatted to ext3. I have a Linux PC so I could examine the drive.
 
Bigphil said:
Would you or somebody on the Forum explain further as I don't know what SMART stats mean.
Click to expand...
The SMART parameters are a collection of statistics recorded by the hard drive that give information about the health of the drive. Have a look at https://linuxconfig.org/how-to-check-an-hard-drive-health-from-the-command-line-using-smartctl for how to access them from Linux. If you can post the results here various people can give you some insights into the meaning and significance of the various parameters.
 
Bigphil said:
My first Freeview PVR was a Panasonic (I forget the model number) which I bought early 2010 when freeview first came to this area. It never 'missed a beat'. However eventually the hard Drive packed up in early 2023 so I thought that instead of fitting a new drive I would treat myself to a new recorder (a decision i'm regretting now). That is when I bought the Humax. Unfortunately the problem didn't manifest itself until the guarantee had expired otherwise I would have taken it back and demanded my money back.
Seeing as the Panasonic lasted for 13 years I wouldn't expect the Humax to reached end of life after nearly 3 years.
Click to expand...
Buy a second hand HDR Fox T2 on eBay. Across my family there are 4 of them in use and have been since it was a new model around 2010. The custom firmware (documented elsewhere on this forum) adds lots of features including fixdisk, and our accumulated knowledge means a number of hardware issues can be repaired.
 
Well that was a disaster.
I run Smartchk, see screenshot below:-
screenshot.png

I don't undestand why near the top it says 'overall health = passed' but near the bottom it says 'this drive is failing'
Attached is the full smartchk file, I've no idea what it all means.

The drive is divided into 3 partitions, the largest one where I guess it stores its recordings wouldn't mount which is a pity because I was hoping to be able to copy the recordings on to the PC and copy them back if I needed to change the drive.

However when I refitted the drive the Humax couldn't see it, after a few power off/on it eventually saw it but said ir needed to be formatted. I did a Factory Default but still the same. I've now formatted it so we will see what happens. Once again I've lost all my recorded programs.
 

Attachments

Bigphil said:
I was hoping to be able to copy the recordings on to the PC and copy them back if I needed to change the drive.
Click to expand...
It's an Ext3 partition which is a Unix format, Windows doesn't know how to read it. You can download a "Boot Linux from USB stick" image and boot that and copy from this drive to something else, but if you don't use Ext3 you risk losing important metadata or even truncating the file.
 
Bigphil said:
I was hoping to be able to copy the recordings on to the PC and copy them back if I needed to change the drive.

I've now formatted it
Click to expand...
Why did you do that if you wanted to copy stuff off it?

There is no point doing anything with that drive. You need a new one - £20 from the river company. Cheaper than a new box anyway.
I believe that model is a 2.5" HDD - I might be tempted to try an SSD.
 
Last edited:
prpr said:
Why did you do that if you wanted to copy stuff of it?
Click to expand...
Off?
It's fairly straightforward to copy files off a 2000T providing the FTP server starts and can still access the disk. You can even put the files back on a new disk. Alternatively copy to USB drive might have worked and you can copy back. I'm not quite sure what the difference between the 1800T and 2000T is (apart from size and type of disk), but I suspect the copy methods are available.
Post #1:
Bigphil said:
I have re-formatted the drive several times and done a HDD check, no errors reported, but it has not sorted the problem
Click to expand...
( To answer first quote) Good question prpr. Having reformatted the disk several times, there's nothing to copy
 
Some home truths:
  1. The HDD test these units use is just a SMART short test. This is mostly not a useful test in my experience. It frequently tells you everything is OK when it isn't.
  2. Formatting a disk just re-makes the file system (and therefore destroys anything stored therein). It does NOT fix any physical sector problems with the disk.
  3. The SMART says Passed because the disk only has a number of bad sectors which can potentially be re-mapped and restore normal operation, but you have to write them to do it. This is not easy in normal operation.
  4. Experience says that disks with several hundred bad sectors are not worth bothering with and are likely to generate more fairly shortly afterwards, even if the existing bad ones can be re-mapped without running out of spares.
  5. Don't use Windows for stuff like this.
 
Pending sector count is worrying here(928). Although some may turn out to be okay the rest will become reallocated sectors (currently=0). Approximately 900 reallocated sectors sounds like prpr's #4 in previous post - disk doomed
(I suppose it's just possible all the pending sectors could be okay - but I very much doubt it.)
 
When I get a new drive it will probably be formatted to NTFS or FAT32.
Will the Humax see the drive and format it or do I need to format it to ext3.
 
Bigphil said:
When I get a new drive it will probably be formatted to NTFS or FAT32.
Will the Humax see the drive and format it or do I need to format it to ext3.
Click to expand...
It should see the drive and offer to format irrespective of the current format (or lack of format for a brand new disk).
 
I found a drive that I took out of a blowed up laptop a little wile ago, it's a 500GB Hitachi SATA drive.
I run it through a piece of software called HDsentinel which gave it a clean bill of health so I fitted it to the Humax and it does work.
Only time will tell if it's fixed the problem.
Question - my machine ia an 1800-T but the circuit board says 2000-T, whats the diference?
 
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