Interrupted recordings linked to hard disk problem

P

Philipwb

New Member
The custom software has been working fine, I am really impressed.

Recently, over 50% of our recordings, state, when I play them, the recording was interrupted, when I play the recordings, I have normally lost 10% of the recordings.

I ran a hard disk check, which gave me the error message of:

"Cannot format the the hard disk the capacity is too large"

I have then removed the custom software and formatted the hard disk, without errors, my recordings are not interrupted.

I then reinstall the custom software and I have the interrupted problem and hard disk error.

Any ideas?

Thanks

Philip
 
That is very interesting in several ways.
  1. It sounds like you tried to run the disk format process from the Humax menus rather than the disk check (also in the Humax menus). We have believed the native format process complains when the drive is larger than 1TB, but your observation suggests the CF has some interaction with it. What size is your drive?
  2. This is the first report (AFAIK) of problems of this kind. How long have you been a CF user? What versions of the Humax standard firmware and custom firmware do you have installed? What set of packages are you running?
  3. The latest CF (currently 2.15) includes disk repair tools which get down to the nitty-gritty of the drive better than a quick format, but they are only accessible via Telnet. See HERE (click).
 
1. I did run the Humax tools, as I didn't know there was an alternative. My drive is 500GB.
2. I have been using CF for 6 months. Humax standard version is: 102.29, CF version 102.29_215.
3. I will look at the disk repair tools.

Thanks

Philip
 
On reflection, I don't think the hard disk check error message is linked to the interrupted recording problem. I ran through a series of checks, one being the hard disk and got the error message. I put 2 + 2 together and got 6.

I am focusing on the interrupted recording problem, I successfully recorded three programmes last night using the original humax firmware, and have installed the custom firmware today, and will record my normal programmes for a few days and report back.

Thanks

Philip
 
I reset the box to the RMA settings, installed the latest version of the Humax system, then installed the latest version of the CFW, I have recorded 10 programmes, without interruption, it looks okay now. Philip.
 
Philipwb said:
I ran a hard disk check, which gave me the error message of:

"Cannot format the the hard disk the capacity is too large"

I then reinstall the custom software and I have the interrupted problem and hard disk error.
Click to expand...

I have also experienced both of these problems while using the CF. I was installing the CF for the first time, and decided I'd somehow installed too many or conflicting packages.

For info, the reason I was trying to reformat the HDD was because the machine stopped recording any programmes. Other actions through the webif reported an error of ...file system read-only. The only solution I found was to revert to standard firmware and reformat the HDD.

Don't know if that info will help anyone.
 
Alan99 said:
For info, the reason I was trying to reformat the HDD was because the machine stopped recording any programmes. Other actions through the webif reported an error of ...file system read-only. The only solution I found was to revert to standard firmware and reformat the HDD.
Click to expand...

That's a classic sign of filesystem corruption. It usually occurs due to the box crashing or being powered off at the switch on the back without being shut down first but it can happen for other reasons. It isn't related to the custom firmware (many people have come here for help because their box stopped recording anything with the standard firmware) although the CFW does exercise the disk slightly more with certain packages and can expose latent problems earlier than they would otherwise manifest.

The best way to fix this is via the CFW Maintenance Mode in conjunction with the fix-disk process. It shouldn't be necessary to reformat the disk, although that will definitely fix the corruption.

I actually recommend running the fix-disk process from maintenance mode from time to time.
 
Thanks for the advice. Hopefully I won't need to do this again, but if I do, I'll try the fix-disk first.
 
I ran fix-disk and got this text, does anyone knows what it means?


Please select option: 1
Any additional options (or press return for none):
Are you sure you wish to run the hard disk checker? [Y/N] y
Running /bin/fix-disk
Custom firmware version 2.15


Checking disk sda

Using superblock 0 on sda3
Using superblock 0 on sda1
Using superblock 0 on sda2

Partition /dev/sda1 is already unmounted
Partition /dev/sda2 is already unmounted
Partition /dev/sda3 is already unmounted

Pending sector error(s) found
Running disk self test
Error - pending sectors but LBA not found

Press return to continue:
 
Hmm, interesting. It looks like your disk has a problem but the problem sector is not being located. Can you post the output from the web interface "Hard Disk" button on the "Diagnostics" page. Alternatively if you are still in "Maintenance Mode", then post the output from:

Code: 
smartctl -a /dev/sda
 

SMART Status​
 PASSED
Model Family​
 Seagate Pipeline HD 5900.2
Device Model​
 ST3500312CS
Serial Number​
 5VV5ZKS4
LU WWN Device Id​
 5 000c50 03851556a
Firmware Version​
 SC13
User Capacity​
 500,107,862,016 bytes [500 GB]
Sector Size​
 512 bytes logical/physical
Device is​
 In smartctl database [for details use: -P show]
ATA Version is​
 8
ATA Standard is​
 ATA-8-ACS revision 4
Local Time is​
 Wed Feb 27 21:31:38 2013 GMT
SMART support is​
 Available - device has SMART capability.
SMART support is​
 Enabled​
Attributes
ID​
Name​
Flags​
Raw Value​
Value​
Worst​
Thresh​
Type​
Updated​
When Failed​
1 Raw_Read_Error_Rate POSR-- 122396049 117 087 006 Pre-fail Always -
3 Spin_Up_Time PO---- 0 097 097 000 Pre-fail Always -
4 Start_Stop_Count -O--CK 5796 095 095 020 Old_age Always -
5 Reallocated_Sector_Ct PO--CK 0 100 100 036 Pre-fail Always -
7 Seek_Error_Rate POSR-- 111445935 080 060 030 Pre-fail Always -
9 Power_On_Hours -O--CK 4613 095 095 000 Old_age Always -
10 Spin_Retry_Count PO--C- 0 100 100 097 Pre-fail Always -
12 Power_Cycle_Count -O--CK 2898 098 098 020 Old_age Always -
184 End-to-End_Error -O--CK 0 100 100 099 Old_age Always -
187 Reported_Uncorrect -O--CK 582 001 001 000 Old_age Always -
188 Command_Timeout -O--CK 0 100 100 000 Old_age Always -
189 High_Fly_Writes -O-RCK 0 100 100 000 Old_age Always -
190 Airflow_Temperature_Cel -O---K 53 047 044 045 Old_age Always In_the_past
194 Temperature_Celsius -O---K 53 053 056 000 Old_age Always -
195 Hardware_ECC_Recovered -O-RC- 122396049 045 038 000 Old_age Always -
197 Current_Pending_Sector -O--C- 1 100 100 000 Old_age Always -
198 Offline_Uncorrectable ----C- 1 100 100 000 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% 4611 -
# 2 Short offline Completed without error 00% 4611 -
# 3 Short offline Completed without error 00% 4609 -
# 4 Short offline Completed without error 00% 4587 -
# 5 Short offline Completed without error 00% 4567 -
# 6 Short offline Completed without error 00% 4547 -
# 7 Short offline Completed without error 00% 4277 -
# 8 Short offline Completed without error 00% 3389 -
# 9 Short offline Completed without error 00% 2596 -​
 
It definitely has a problem - the two lines marked in red in the webif report. I suggest running a long test from maintenance mode using the command below. This can take at least two hours to run (it will give a closer estimate) so you may wish to run it overnight.
Code: 
smartctl -t long /dev/sda
After the test has completed try creating a new report using the command from the previous message. This time you should see the LBA number of the problem sector near the end of the report. If so, then re-run fix-disk - this should then fix the problem.
 
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