[Solved] - PVR-9150T - Recent recordings don't appear in list

[Owen Smith]

She prefers to use it because she knows it, and at 89 years old doesn't grasp new tech easily, but I will look at more recent Humax devices in the hope that the interface is similar enough for her to operate.

I suggest a used HDR Fox T2. They may be old, but they are HD and have HDMI video output, and unlike all other Humax devices we have the custom firmware allowing auto decryption of recordings etc. Also being the first HD model from Humax they're probably closer in interface to the 9150T than newer models.

 

[EEPhil]

Also being the first HD model from Humax they're probably closer in interface to the 9150T than newer models.

I don't know the HDR Fox T2 interface, but I do know the 9150T, 2000T, 5000T and Aura ones. There's some learning required for all of them. A quick skim through the Fox manual suggests the interface is closer to the 2000T than the 9150T.
The only new model currently available is the Aura, but...

She prefers to use it because she knows it, and at 89 years old doesn't grasp new tech easily,

...it is far too complicated. The 5000T is also a bit of a pain. On balance, if you are prepared to go for a used model I'd follow Owen's suggestion.

 

[Owen Smith]

Another thing in favour of the HDR Fox T2 is we have diagnosed two of the common hardware faults, know what symptoms they cause, and how to fix them if you can use a soldering iron. On top of that using the custom firmware you can run fixdisk on the box itself, no need to remove the drive and fix it on a separate unix box.

 

[Jackfruit1000]

The former should fix everything. As I say, check the 197/198 afterwards.

Double check it's still /dev/sdc (you could use lsblk or similar) and then:
sudo dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sdc bs=1M status=progress
assuming it's a modern Linux. If that errors, then remove the status=progress stuff. The bs=1M thing probably makes it go a bit faster (but I've never done any real testing), and could be omitted also.

Hello again,

I know I marked the topic as solved, but could you clarify the dd command please?

I've read up the basics of what it does, and understand that the command you suggested will have written zeros to the entire disc, but does that take damaged areas out of service? Is the point that it's a sufficiently modern drive to have smart features, and does this automatically during the dd process.

Googling the subject inevitably comes up with different answers, but a few results seem to be recommending using other commands, like badblocks and fsck.

To have the disc in the best condition going forward should I have run additional commands?

The Humax itself, when presented with the wiped drive, asked me if I wanted to reformat it and it was almost instantaneous. I'm guessing all it did was create the basic filesystem, and not do anything at the low level...

To be honest, this is at the edge of my understanding, so layman / newbie answers will be appreciated!

Thanks,

Piers.

 

[Black Hole]

Yes, the HDD's self-repair mechanism should map out defective sectors. The result is transparent to the user or the operating system, apart from the statistics provided in the SMART data.

 

[prpr]

the command you suggested will have written zeros to the entire disc, but does that take damaged areas out of service?

The disk firmware should re-map dodgy sectors during write to a spare sector, seamlessly from a user point of view, and adjusting the relevant attribute counts in the SMART data.

Is the point that it's a sufficiently modern drive to have smart features, and does this automatically during the dd process.

Yes. Writing to every sector on the disk should re-map all that are unreliable, until it runs out of spares.

a few results seem to be recommending using other commands, like badblocks and fsck.

fsck just fixes the filesystem - it doesn't nothing to the physical disk surface unless a write happens to coincide with a bad sector, in which case the above applies.
badblocks, with the appropriate option(s), can be useful for non-destructive (as far as possible) testing.

To have the disc in the best condition going forward should I have run additional commands?

Not really. I'd have expected it either to have been fixed properly or to have told you that it couldn't (by the counts remaining non-zero) but it seems to be in some half state that I've never seen. You could try running badblocks on it and/or another long SMART test to see what happens.

The Humax itself, when presented with the wiped drive, asked me if I wanted to reformat it and it was almost instantaneous. I'm guessing all it did was create the basic filesystem, and not do anything at the low level...

Absolutely. Creating a filesystem is all it's ever going to do. It does not do anything to fix the disk sectors unless one of its writes coincdes with a bad sector, as for fsck and dd.

Bear in mind also that sometimes the faults on the disk are beyond what SMART reporting can seemingly cope with. Your choice then is to carry on with it, accepting this, or replace it with a new one. It depends what value you put on the data and whether you have backups etc.

 

[Jackfruit1000]

Thanks for the quick answers. Despite having switched to Linux (Mint) more than a decade ago, I still don't understand a lot of what's going on under the surface, so the clear explanations are much appreciated!