Is my hummy dying?

M

mcbrucer

New Member
Hello all,

We've had lots of issues over recent months with our HDR Fox T2 . Constant freezes, failed recordings, unable to delete anything, channels disappearing etc etc.

I had though last week that I had finally cured it by putting it in maintenance mode and formatting the disk (though did have some trouble doing even that - disk too big??)

Anyway, today - its freezing up again. I quick look in the web portal says:

!! WARNING !!

There appear to be some hardware problems with the internal hard disk on this device.

Disk pending sector count is: 248 (was 96)
Disk offline sector count is: 248 (was 96)​

Is this a failing disk? could it be at the root of all of my problems? I'm confident with hardware so is it easy to swap the disk out for another one? does it need to be of a certain size or spec? (I have loads of old ones kicking about the place).

My wife thinks that as christmas is fast approaching, we should just go out and buy a new box but looking at the current line up of kit, i'm not so sure... Nothing seems to have taken things forward or even to be as good as the yummy with the custom firmware.

The free time/freesat one does look tempting but it feels like a bit of a gamble...


Any / all help or advice is appreciated

Cheers
 
mcbrucer said:
Disk pending sector count is: 248 (was 96)
Disk offline sector count is: 248 (was 96)​
Click to expand...
Those are certainly the symptoms of a disk with problems. What is the reallocated sector count? Black Hole's suggestions are worthwhile but if they don't fix it then a new drive would be the best choice. Ideally you want a drive optimised for PVR usage. I fitted a 2TB SeagateST2000VM003 16 months ago and have been very pleased with it and have had no problems; see for instance http://www.ebuyer.com/414223-seagate-2tb-pipeline-internal-hard-drive-st2000vm003
 
Thanks both.

Fixdisk didnt work - kept going around in circles on LBA errors.

In desperation, I went out and bought a HDR-1000S from Argos and I have to say, i'm very dissapointed with it. Its so slow as to be almost unusable at all and the channels are all in a very strange order.

I'm pretty sure I'm going to return it.

Anyway, this means I'll need to order a new disk and I will take your advice and order a seagate pipeline - my only question is this:

As we dont use our hummy heavily for recordings, I'm thinking I could save a few quid and go for a smaller capacity disk. My question is, are smaller disks any more reliable in general (or easier to setup/format on the hummy) than larger ones?

Cheers!
 
mcbrucer said:
As we dont use our hummy heavily for recordings, I'm thinking I could save a few quid and go for a smaller capacity disk. My question is, are smaller disks any more reliable in general (or easier to setup/format on the hummy) than larger ones?
Click to expand...
I don't think there is strong statistical evidence anywhere. What is more important is the model of hard drive; every manufacturer has some models that are less reliable than others. If you don't need a 2TB drive then the 1TB Seagate is cheaper and should have similar reliability (reports for this model on this forum are generally good with only one or two failure reports so far) to its 2TB big brother see for instance http://www.ebuyer.com/337318-seagate-1tb-pipeline-internal-hard-drive-st1000vm002. I don't think Seagate AV drives are readily available in sizes smaller than 1TB but Western Digital drives are but the cost saving isn't large.
 
thanks Martin! In the end there was only £15 in it and so I ordered the 2TB pipeline from amazon for £72... Fingers crossed!!
 
Yeah, thats right it is a freesat <free time> box - I'm lucky to have both a dish and an aerial - and its rubbish IMHO compared to the HDR-FOX T2.
 
@mcbrucer. You really shouldn't talk about satellite stuff in the Fox-T2 forum, even if only in passing to say how rubbish they are compared with the T2, it confuses some people.;)
 
Hello all - I'm reading this thread with interest as for the first time I've had a Disc Pending Sector Count warning this evening. Am interested in buying and installing the Seagate 2Gb drive mentioned above, but being completely non-technical am a bit worried by all the manual partitioning measures mentioned in the 2Gb installation blog. With the latest custom firmware is there any idiotproof way to prepare the new disc for use automatically for those of us who don't have a clue what we're doing? Thanks!
 
Fixdisk (run in maintenance mode with custom firmware) may be able to reallocate your pending sectors: your disk might not need changing yet. The latest standard firmware (1.03.12) will format a 2TB disk. Just use the regular remote control method: no special procedure is required.
 
wibbers said:
Hello all - I'm reading this thread with interest as for the first time I've had a Disc Pending Sector Count warning this evening.
Click to expand...
What is the current count of reallocated sectors? How many pending sectors are there?
With the latest custom firmware is there any idiotproof way to prepare the new disc for use automatically for those of us who don't have a clue what we're doing?
Click to expand...
If you are running version 1.03.12 of the standard firmware then the Humax will do it for you. You miss a couple of the optimisations that af123's instructions provide but nothing of great consequence.
 
I can't find the warning with all the details again now since I acknowledged it... is there a log file for it somewhere?
 
Thank you!

Reallocated sector count - 099
Current pending sector (is that the one you meant?) - 100

From the diagnostics report the disc has 5 things marked as "pre-fail" (Raw read error rate, Spin up time, Reallocated sector count, Seek error rate and Spin retry count) and the rest down as "Old Age".
 
wibbers said:
Reallocated sector count - 099
Click to expand...
That shouldn't be a problem until it reaches something of the order of a thousand sectors.
Current pending sector (is that the one you meant?) - 100
Click to expand...
Can I just ask you to confirm that 100 is the raw value (which is what is of most interest) rather then the value? Any current pending sectors are a cause for concern and as MontysEvilTwin has already said using fix-disk is the way to try and correct them; if the value is 100 then it will be tedious.
From the diagnostics report the disc has 5 things marked as "pre-fail" (Raw read error rate, Spin up time, Reallocated sector count, Seek error rate and Spin retry count) and the rest down as "Old Age".
Click to expand...
All normal and no cause for concern.
 
Thank you for your help. The current pending sector line shows "raw value" as 0 and "value" as 100.

I'll dive into the world of Telnet and fix-disk and see what happens. Before I start, is this destructive for the data already on the drive; should I prepare a long USB backup session?
 
wibbers said:
Thank you for your help. The current pending sector line shows "raw value" as 0 and "value" as 100.
Click to expand...
OK then your disk is in good health.
I'll dive into the world of Telnet and fix-disk and see what happens. Before I start, is this destructive for the data already on the drive; should I prepare a long USB backup session?
Click to expand...
Frankly I wouldn't bother unless you are actually seeing a problem. If you do want to use fix-disk then it shouldn't damage any existing data but obviously there are no guarantees. If there are important recordings then backing them up now would be a good idea.
 
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