Here's a rundown of the issues I had and the solutions found:
'Permission Denied' error
In the end, this turned out to be quite easy, it was simply down to using humaxrw with the -n option in recovery mode. That is
humaxrw 1: -r -n -l
enabled me to see a list of the files on the disc. The -n option
is described in the README.txt file, but not in the context of this error message, which was why I hadn't tried it. I got the heads up from another Linux Mint user who pointed me to this thread, which I hadn't found when searching previously:
My Humax PVR has lost all its recordings (record menu has disappeared). I have hooked up the HDD to a PC and am running humaxrw to try to recover the files. If I run almost any command. eg. > humaxrw -l 0: I see the following error message: "Directory 1: Permission denied" I am running it...
hummy.tv
As expected with the -n option in recovery mode there were no additional details:
Code:
1: ***Buffer***
2: ***Buffer***
3: ***Info disabled***
4: ***Info disabled***
etc.
It was NOT necessary to explicitly run humaxrw in a command prompt as administrator on my Win XP machine, though that might be because my user account has administrator privileges anyway. As suggested elsewhere, 'permission denied' is most likely a mis-described error and indicative of the state of the drive itself (see below).
Having 'got' the files off the disc with humaxrw and run ts2hrw I then loaded all the recovered files onto a fresh drive, viewed the first minute or so to identify what the recording was, renamed the files on my PC in the format yyyymmdd hhmm
programmename.ts, re-ran ts2hrw, wiped the humax drive again and reloaded them all. I took the opportunity to sort the files into groups, e.g. all episodes of a given series got given consecutive dates / times, though without any programme info it meant watching the beginning of each episode online to get them in the right order.
Running humaxrw under Linux Mint 19.1 64-bit
As set up this didn't work, because LM 19.1 doesn't have the 32-bit C libraries installed that humaxrw requires. I spent quite a long time discussing installing them on the Linux Mint forum because my initial search in the Synaptic package manager didn't show the files required, and I was concerned about installation of 32-bit libraries messing up my 64-bit OS (I can't post external links yet, but it's at http:// [no space] forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.php?f=90&t=328653 if anyone's interested).
In the end it was simply a case of running
apt-get install libc6:i386
as suggested by
@xyz321 (thank you!). There appear (touch wood) to be no repercussions!
I've now managed to successfully run humaxrw on my Linux machine. It needs to be run as super user, i.e.
sudo ./humaxrw /dev/sdb -l
otherwise you get the error message
/dev/sdb: Permission denied
.
On a positive note, when plugging in a Humax HDD via a USB caddy to my Linux laptop the get commands take about 1/3 of the time they did in my 20-year old Win XP desktop!
Drive failure
After recovering files, wiping the disc and running the Smart tests detailed above I decided to have a play with it. On XP I ran the MiniTool Partition Wizard surface scan which showed, entirely as expected, a load of bad sectors. I tried formatting the disc under XP, but the format failed.
I then put it back into the PVR-9200t, formatted it there, and recorded a 15 minute programme. It worked, but that could have simply been luck. I took it out, connected it to the Linux laptop, and it still said permission denied unless in recovery mode (-r -n). So, whatever bit of the disc it is that caused the initial failure looks to be toast still, despite its apparent ability to record new programmes. You can't 'put' files in recovery mode, so Plan A, to use it as a non-essential backup of my other working 9200, is out of the window. Suffice to say, as
@prpr said, it's WEEE now!
Replacement Drives
As
@MartinLiddle said, it's old tech and probably time to just replace if anything else goes wrong. To compound this point, I've been keeping a 20-year old P-III Compaq desktop alive because it has IDE connectors and a large enough drive to back up recordings. Now that I've proved I can do it on my Linux laptop with a PATA-USB caddy I should probably dump that as well!
That said, I looked up the original Seagate drives. You can get the marketing brochure and datasheets for the DB35 range here:
www [.nospace] seagate.com/files/docs/pdf/marketing/po_db35.pdf
www [.nospace] seagate.com/files/docs/pdf/datasheet/disc/ds_db35.pdf
They do explicitly say that the drives were optimised for DVR use. I'd need to do more research, but my guess is that there will be other drives, and other manufacturers, similarly optimised for DVR use that would serve as substitutes. The issue with a 9200 is obviously that it's IDE / PATA, so the choice would be limited, and stock old, unless you installed a PATA-SATA converter.
Apologies for being so long-winded, but hopefully the above comprehensive details will be useful to others in future.
Thanks, everyone, for the help. It's much appreciated!