Is the hard disk failing

strattp

New Member
Last week I got the hard disk warning banner at the top of the webif screen.

I booted into maintenance mode and ran fixdisk (I've attached the log), and also acknowledged the disk error in diagnostics.

Just checking now I can see these errors:

upload_2017-7-4_8-44-49.png

Do I need to change the disk.
upload_2017-7-4_8-46-22.png
 

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  • fix-disk.0.log.txt
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My guess would be that you need to sort out why it's so hot first.
Do you have the 'fan' and 'sysmon' packages installed?
If so, what min fan speed have you got set and what does sysmon say about the temp?
If you have a min-speed set, is the fan actually rotating.
 
No I didn't have the fan and sysmon packages installed, I've just installed them now.

I've set the fan minimum to 100% and will check the sysmon hdd temperature chart once some history has been recorded.

I think it may be in order to open the case and check the fan is running and isn't clogged up with fluff.
 
You can check it's running with a bit of paper to see if it flaps outward, but opening up and checking for fluff is a good idea as well.
 
The fan is definitely working, the paper blows away.

The temperature reported by sysmon is coming down, now at 38C, but I have set the fan to 100% using the fan setting.

Interesting that sysmon says the fan is off, maybe it's confused because I have set it to 100%.
 

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  • chart.png
    chart.png
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Sysmon can't tell whether the fan is running or a what speed. What it does is report the expected behaviour of the standard firmware under those circumstances.
 
One of our boxes suddenly threw the 197 & 198 errors, with 100 in each, about a year, maybe two, back. I didn't run any diagnostics as I'm not that au fait with the tools, but the box has been working fine since and so far the numbers haven't gone up.
So it's probably not worth worrying about unless they keep trending up or something else starts complaining.

(Edit. It may be a bit of deja vu but I have an odd feeling that ours started out with 98 which would mean it's gone up 2 but without raising an alert. However my memory is atrocious, so I'm probably wrong.)
 
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I would be less worried about the temperature than the number of current_pending_sectors. I suggest you run fix-disk again. Are you using the latest version of the custom firmware? If not updating before running fix-disk again might be a good idea.
 
Thanks to everyones help, I undid the cover and checked buildup of dust etc, suprisingly it was very clean inside (considering it dates from 2012 and this is the first time the cover has been removed.

Currently I have set the fan to 40% and it is running with a disk temp of 29C.

I am running firmware 3.11 (build 3735) webif 1.4.2-6

Does firmware 3.13 have a later version of fix-disk? If so I will update before running fix-disk again.
 
Does firmware 3.13 have a later version of fix-disk? If so I will update before running fix-disk again.
Yes.
You have a high number of pending sectors which can cause glitches or pauses on playback so it would be good to fix them. They will either become Reallocated Sectors which is something to keep an eye on but not an immediate problem, or the disk firmware will decide that the sectors are actually ok. As there are so many, a fix-disk will unfortunately take a long time but you can speed it up by using the -B option when prompted. The down-side of that is that you won't be told which recordings are affected but the problems usually only show up as short glitches anyway.
 
Updated firmware to latest ran fixdisk with -B option, see attached log file.
After coming out of maintenance mode I get the disk warning banner:

upload_2017-7-4_18-11-6.png

upload_2017-7-4_18-11-40.png
upload_2017-7-4_18-12-19.png

Are there any other actions that can be done with fixdisk, or should I just bite the bullet and get a new drive?
 

Attachments

  • fix-disk.0.log (2).txt
    8.5 KB · Views: 8
Just checking now I can see these errors:
Your hard disk has never reached an unsafe temperature, anything below 60 Deg. C is O.K., while a 'worst' temperature of 57/58 is normal. The line 190 banner is only a warning and should really be Amber rather than Red. The 'Failing Now' message only indicates that the fan has been required
 
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Are there any other actions that can be done with fixdisk, or should I just bite the bullet and get a new drive?
I may well be misunderstanding the output but I don't see any evidence of fix-disk attempting to correct the problematic blocks. Wait for af123 or xyz321 to comment.
 
I may well be misunderstanding the output but I don't see any evidence of fix-disk attempting to correct the problematic blocks. Wait for af123 or xyz321 to comment.
You're right. The output doesn't look like you used -B or said yes to any of the prompts it gave you. However the number of problem sectors has gone down by one.

Try:
-B -y
Enter this when it asks for any additional options for fix-disk after you select it from the maintenance mode menu.
 
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