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[Solved] PVR-9200 HDD failure, running humaxrw on a 64-bit Linux Mint PC and the 'Permission denied' error

I've installed Smartmontools, and here's the output of the short test:
I would say the SMART data doesn't look anything like as bad as I was expecting. Attributes 197 and 198 really need to be zero. I am concerned about the series of "Error 6102 occurred at disk power-on lifetime: 41585 hours (1732 days + 17 hours)" messages that don't look so good. I would try a long test ( -t long) and see what that throws up.
 
I would say the SMART data doesn't look anything like as bad as I was expecting. Attributes 197 and 198 really need to be zero. I am concerned about the series of "Error 6102 occurred at disk power-on lifetime: 41585 hours (1732 days + 17 hours)" messages that don't look so good. I would try a long test ( -t long) and see what that throws up.
I ran the long test as well, and the output was essentially identical.

A also downloaded the Seagate Tools and ran them on the drive. The results were as follows:

Code:
--------------- SeaTools for Windows v1.4.0.7 ---------------
23/08/2020 17:25:39
Model Number: WDC     WD1600BEKT-75A25
Serial Number: WD-WXM1A30E7055
Firmware Revision: 01.0
SMART - Started 23/08/2020 17:25:39
SMART - Pass 23/08/2020 17:25:45
Short DST - Started 23/08/2020 17:25:56
Short DST - FAIL 23/08/2020 17:26:10 (at about 90%)
FAIL
Short Generic - Started 23/08/2020 17:59:11
Short Generic - Pass 23/08/2020 18:00:49
Long Generic - Started 23/08/2020 18:00:59
Long Generic - FAIL 23/08/2020 18:46:33 (at 97%)
FAIL

I did manage to get the recordings off it with humaxrw in the end, so with no worries about the data I formatted it using the Linux Disks programme, overwriting the entire disc with zeros to force remapping of bad sectors (as I think I understand it), but not applying a filesystem.

Since then I've rerun the Seagate Tools, with no change, and rerun Badblocks. This time it took longer before it started finding bad blocks, but once it had reached over 100 with only a small part of the drive tested I reckoned the writing was on the wall so stopped the test!

Here are the smartctl short test results now:

Code:
piers@piers-Latitude-E6410:~$ sudo smartctl -t short /dev/sdb
smartctl 7.0 2018-12-30 r4883 [x86_64-linux-4.15.0-112-generic] (local build)
Copyright (C) 2002-18, Bruce Allen, Christian Franke, www.smartmontools.org

=== START OF OFFLINE IMMEDIATE AND SELF-TEST SECTION ===
Sending command: "Execute SMART Short self-test routine immediately in off-line mode".
Drive command "Execute SMART Short self-test routine immediately in off-line mode" successful.
Testing has begun.
Please wait 1 minutes for test to complete.
Test will complete after Mon Aug 24 15:24:20 2020

Use smartctl -X to abort test.


piers@piers-Latitude-E6410:~$ sudo smartctl -a /dev/sdb
smartctl 7.0 2018-12-30 r4883 [x86_64-linux-4.15.0-112-generic] (local build)
Copyright (C) 2002-18, Bruce Allen, Christian Franke, www.smartmontools.org

=== START OF INFORMATION SECTION ===
Model Family:     Seagate Barracuda 7200.9
Device Model:     ST3160212ACE
Serial Number:    5LSAYG8S
Firmware Version: 3.ACB
User Capacity:    160,041,885,696 bytes [160 GB]
Sector Size:      512 bytes logical/physical
Device is:        In smartctl database [for details use: -P show]
ATA Version is:   ATA/ATAPI-7 (minor revision not indicated)
Local Time is:    Mon Aug 24 15:25:58 2020 BST
SMART support is: Available - device has SMART capability.
SMART support is: Enabled

=== START OF READ SMART DATA SECTION ===
SMART overall-health self-assessment test result: PASSED

General SMART Values:
Offline data collection status:  (0x82)    Offline data collection activity
                    was completed without error.
                    Auto Offline Data Collection: Enabled.
Self-test execution status:      ( 119)    The previous self-test completed having
                    the read element of the test failed.
Total time to complete Offline 
data collection:         (15556) seconds.
Offline data collection
capabilities:              (0x5b) SMART execute Offline immediate.
                    Auto Offline data collection on/off support.
                    Suspend Offline collection upon new
                    command.
                    Offline surface scan supported.
                    Self-test supported.
                    No Conveyance Self-test supported.
                    Selective Self-test supported.
SMART capabilities:            (0x0003)    Saves SMART data before entering
                    power-saving mode.
                    Supports SMART auto save timer.
Error logging capability:        (0x01)    Error logging supported.
                    General Purpose Logging supported.
Short self-test routine 
recommended polling time:      (   1) minutes.
Extended self-test routine
recommended polling time:      (  54) minutes.

SMART Attributes Data Structure revision number: 10
Vendor Specific SMART Attributes with Thresholds:
ID# ATTRIBUTE_NAME          FLAG     VALUE WORST THRESH TYPE      UPDATED  WHEN_FAILED RAW_VALUE
  1 Raw_Read_Error_Rate     0x000f   092   066   006    Pre-fail  Always       -       48312917
  3 Spin_Up_Time            0x0003   093   092   000    Pre-fail  Always       -       0
  4 Start_Stop_Count        0x0032   088   088   020    Old_age   Always       -       12984
  5 Reallocated_Sector_Ct   0x0033   089   089   036    Pre-fail  Always       -       459
  7 Seek_Error_Rate         0x000f   084   060   030    Pre-fail  Always       -       251248661
  9 Power_On_Hours          0x0032   053   053   000    Old_age   Always       -       41595
 10 Spin_Retry_Count        0x0013   100   099   097    Pre-fail  Always       -       0
 12 Power_Cycle_Count       0x0032   100   100   020    Old_age   Always       -       793
187 Reported_Uncorrect      0x0032   001   001   000    Old_age   Always       -       1951
189 High_Fly_Writes         0x003a   100   100   000    Old_age   Always       -       0
190 Airflow_Temperature_Cel 0x0022   062   060   045    Old_age   Always       -       38 (Min/Max 32/38)
194 Temperature_Celsius     0x0022   038   040   000    Old_age   Always       -       38 (0 13 0 0 0)
195 Hardware_ECC_Recovered  0x001a   058   050   000    Old_age   Always       -       48312917
197 Current_Pending_Sector  0x0012   097   001   000    Old_age   Always       -       79
198 Offline_Uncorrectable   0x0010   097   001   000    Old_age   Offline      -       79
199 UDMA_CRC_Error_Count    0x003e   200   200   000    Old_age   Always       -       0
200 Multi_Zone_Error_Rate   0x0000   100   253   000    Old_age   Offline      -       0
202 Data_Address_Mark_Errs  0x0032   100   253   000    Old_age   Always       -       0

SMART Error Log Version: 1
ATA Error Count: 8001 (device log contains only the most recent five errors)
    CR = Command Register [HEX]
    FR = Features Register [HEX]
    SC = Sector Count Register [HEX]
    SN = Sector Number Register [HEX]
    CL = Cylinder Low Register [HEX]
    CH = Cylinder High Register [HEX]
    DH = Device/Head Register [HEX]
    DC = Device Command Register [HEX]
    ER = Error register [HEX]
    ST = Status register [HEX]
Powered_Up_Time is measured from power on, and printed as
DDd+hh:mm:SS.sss where DD=days, hh=hours, mm=minutes,
SS=sec, and sss=millisec. It "wraps" after 49.710 days.

Error 8001 occurred at disk power-on lifetime: 41593 hours (1733 days + 1 hours)
  When the command that caused the error occurred, the device was active or idle.

  After command completion occurred, registers were:
  ER ST SC SN CL CH DH
  -- -- -- -- -- -- --
  40 51 00 11 f9 1e f0  Error: UNC at LBA = 0x001ef911 = 2029841

  Commands leading to the command that caused the error were:
  CR FR SC SN CL CH DH DC   Powered_Up_Time  Command/Feature_Name
  -- -- -- -- -- -- -- --  ----------------  --------------------
  25 00 08 10 f9 1e f0 00      02:59:58.126  READ DMA EXT
  25 00 08 10 f9 1e f0 00      02:59:57.259  READ DMA EXT
  25 00 08 10 f9 1e f0 00      02:59:56.473  READ DMA EXT
  25 00 08 10 f9 1e f0 00      03:00:08.403  READ DMA EXT
  25 00 08 10 f9 1e f0 00      03:00:07.689  READ DMA EXT

Error 8000 occurred at disk power-on lifetime: 41593 hours (1733 days + 1 hours)
  When the command that caused the error occurred, the device was active or idle.

  After command completion occurred, registers were:
  ER ST SC SN CL CH DH
  -- -- -- -- -- -- --
  40 51 00 11 f9 1e f0  Error: UNC at LBA = 0x001ef911 = 2029841

  Commands leading to the command that caused the error were:
  CR FR SC SN CL CH DH DC   Powered_Up_Time  Command/Feature_Name
  -- -- -- -- -- -- -- --  ----------------  --------------------
  25 00 08 10 f9 1e f0 00      02:59:58.126  READ DMA EXT
  25 00 08 10 f9 1e f0 00      02:59:57.259  READ DMA EXT
  25 00 08 10 f9 1e f0 00      02:59:56.473  READ DMA EXT
  25 00 08 10 f9 1e f0 00      02:59:55.654  READ DMA EXT
  25 00 08 10 f9 1e f0 00      03:00:07.689  READ DMA EXT

Error 7999 occurred at disk power-on lifetime: 41593 hours (1733 days + 1 hours)
  When the command that caused the error occurred, the device was active or idle.

  After command completion occurred, registers were:
  ER ST SC SN CL CH DH
  -- -- -- -- -- -- --
  40 51 00 11 f9 1e f0  Error: UNC at LBA = 0x001ef911 = 2029841

  Commands leading to the command that caused the error were:
  CR FR SC SN CL CH DH DC   Powered_Up_Time  Command/Feature_Name
  -- -- -- -- -- -- -- --  ----------------  --------------------
  25 00 08 10 f9 1e f0 00      02:59:58.126  READ DMA EXT
  25 00 08 10 f9 1e f0 00      02:59:57.259  READ DMA EXT
  25 00 08 10 f9 1e f0 00      02:59:56.473  READ DMA EXT
  25 00 08 10 f9 1e f0 00      02:59:55.654  READ DMA EXT
  25 00 08 10 f9 1e f0 00      02:59:54.679  READ DMA EXT

Error 7998 occurred at disk power-on lifetime: 41593 hours (1733 days + 1 hours)
  When the command that caused the error occurred, the device was active or idle.

  After command completion occurred, registers were:
  ER ST SC SN CL CH DH
  -- -- -- -- -- -- --
  40 51 00 11 f9 1e f0  Error: UNC at LBA = 0x001ef911 = 2029841

  Commands leading to the command that caused the error were:
  CR FR SC SN CL CH DH DC   Powered_Up_Time  Command/Feature_Name
  -- -- -- -- -- -- -- --  ----------------  --------------------
  25 00 08 10 f9 1e f0 00      02:59:58.126  READ DMA EXT
  25 00 08 10 f9 1e f0 00      02:59:57.259  READ DMA EXT
  25 00 08 10 f9 1e f0 00      02:59:56.473  READ DMA EXT
  25 00 08 10 f9 1e f0 00      02:59:55.654  READ DMA EXT
  25 00 08 10 f9 1e f0 00      02:59:54.679  READ DMA EXT

Error 7997 occurred at disk power-on lifetime: 41593 hours (1733 days + 1 hours)
  When the command that caused the error occurred, the device was active or idle.

  After command completion occurred, registers were:
  ER ST SC SN CL CH DH
  -- -- -- -- -- -- --
  40 51 00 11 f9 1e f0  Error: UNC at LBA = 0x001ef911 = 2029841

  Commands leading to the command that caused the error were:
  CR FR SC SN CL CH DH DC   Powered_Up_Time  Command/Feature_Name
  -- -- -- -- -- -- -- --  ----------------  --------------------
  25 00 08 10 f9 1e f0 00      02:59:58.126  READ DMA EXT
  25 00 08 10 f9 1e f0 00      02:59:57.259  READ DMA EXT
  25 00 08 10 f9 1e f0 00      02:59:56.473  READ DMA EXT
  25 00 08 10 f9 1e f0 00      02:59:55.654  READ DMA EXT
  25 00 08 10 f9 1e f0 00      02:59:54.679  READ DMA EXT

SMART Self-test log structure revision number 1
Num  Test_Description    Status                  Remaining  LifeTime(hours)  LBA_of_first_error
# 1  Short offline       Completed: read failure       70%     41595         200984180
# 2  Extended offline    Completed: read failure       90%     41587         247345970
# 3  Short offline       Completed: read failure       90%     41587         247345970
# 4  Short offline       Completed: read failure       90%     41585         247345970

SMART Selective self-test log data structure revision number 1
 SPAN  MIN_LBA  MAX_LBA  CURRENT_TEST_STATUS
    1        0        0  Not_testing
    2        0        0  Not_testing
    3        0        0  Not_testing
    4        0        0  Not_testing
    5        0        0  Not_testing
Selective self-test flags (0x0):
  After scanning selected spans, do NOT read-scan remainder of disk.
If Selective self-test is pending on power-up, resume after 0 minute delay.

How bad does it look now?
 
I did manage to get the recordings off it with humaxrw in the end,
Do you know what got humaxrw working?
How bad does it look now?
The number of reallocated sectors has increased from 1 to 459 which would be OK if the Current_pending_sector count had decreased to zero but it has increased from 15 to 79. My view is that the hard drive is probably at the end of its life but perhaps someone else can offer a second opinion.
 
The number of reallocated sectors has increased from 1 to 459 which would be OK if the Current_pending_sector count had decreased to zero but it has increased from 15 to 79. My view is that the hard drive is probably at the end of its life but perhaps someone else can offer a second opinion.

Not trustworthy, not worth the bother of trying.
It's Friar Tucked. Only fit for WEEE.
Well, that's a shame, I was hoping it would be good enough to do one last backup of non-essential stuff (e.g. the contents of my other, working, 9200) but I guess all good things must come to an end. :-(

It's interesting that there weren't any obvious symptoms until complete failure. The drive was about 70% full, most of it stuff I'd recorded a long time ago. Maybe if I'd tried watching it all I'd have seen more problems...

So...

The question now is, with my spare drive put into use, what should I get as a replacement / backup?

From reading other threads, I understand that this line of Seagate drives is in some way optimised for PVR use, but I don't know what that means in practice, and presumably as old tech they're quite hard to get hold of now. Ideally I'd have a 300GB+ sized drive and do a backup of both 9200s as they are now. Apart from an old ST3200827ACE, are there other drives / other manufacturers I should look at?
 
Do you know what got humaxrw working?

In the end it was simply down to using the -n option in recovery mode. I was pointed to another old thread here by someone on the Linux Mint forum which I'd failed to find in a search.

As this thread covers a load of different stuff, and it's not all resolved yet (e.g. I haven't managed to run humaxrw on a 64-bit Linux machine yet) do you think I should post a new topic just about getting round the 'Permission denied' message (with a specific heading so that it can be found more easily), or detail it here?
 
IMO: "humaxrw" is the relevant term in the thread title, so there is nothing to lose by adding the information here.
 
From reading other threads, I understand that this line of Seagate drives is in some way optimised for PVR use, but I don't know what that means in practice, and presumably as old tech they're quite hard to get hold of now. Ideally I'd have a 300GB+ sized drive and do a backup of both 9200s as they are now. Apart from an old ST3200827ACE, are there other drives / other manufacturers I should look at?
The 9200T can be quite sensitive to the hard drive that is fitted. Many years ago, when the Seagates went out of production, I tried a Western Digital drive (can't remember the model). If it booted then everything worked fine but it wouldn't boot reliably. Some non Seagate drives do work but again it is too long ago for me to remember the details. Also it is possible to use the later SATA drives with a SATA to IDE converter and I think a post I made about my experiments is still available on Digital Spy. There is a hard limit on the number of recordings you can have and I suggest you only consider drives up to 500GB.

My advice would be to consider seriously whether you want to put money and effort into keeping an obsolete PVR working. You can pick up the later HDR-FOX T2 (also obsolete) for not a lot of money if you shop around and with the standard firmware it is a much better PVR than the 9200T and with the custom firmware additions has very comprehensive functionality. Your recordings from the 9200T can be transferred to an HDR-FOX T2.
 
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In the end it was simply down to using the -n option in recovery mode. I was pointed to another old thread here by someone on the Linux Mint forum which I'd failed to find in a search.

As this thread covers a load of different stuff, and it's not all resolved yet (e.g. I haven't managed to run humaxrw on a 64-bit Linux machine yet) do you think I should post a new topic just about getting round the 'Permission denied' message (with a specific heading so that it can be found more easily), or detail it here?
I suggest you make a post in this thread showing the command line for humaxrw that worked and any other information that you think would be helpful for someone with a similar problem. Can you confirm whether or not you installed the 32 bit compatibility libraries? The current Linux version of humaxrw is definitely a 32 bit executable.
 
From reading other threads, I understand that this line of Seagate drives is in some way optimised for PVR use, but I don't know what that means in practice, and presumably as old tech they're quite hard to get hold of now.
These old IDE/PATA drives are just fairly bog-standard desktop computer drives (although I forget what the ACE bit means). The SATA ones used on later machine were 'Video' drives.
You can still get them new (apparently) on Amazon.

(I've reasonably recently binned a whole load of these Seagate IDE drives, although most were 40 and 80 GB. I've also got 2x 9200 units which I don't use any more. No idea what state the drives are in but I think they're OK. I could probably be persuaded to part with one for not too much money if you really want - either the disk or the whole machine. The logistics of actually doing this are currently somewhat tricky though...)
 
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:


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!
 
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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.
Careful. The Western Digital drive i tried in a 9200T was one optimised for PVR usage but it didn't work reliably. My guess would be that the spin up time was slightly longer than the standard drive. You either research what people have in the past reported works or start your own experiments.
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.
A number of people have gone down the IDE to SATA converter route and there are some descriptions of what has been done available; try reading this thread over at DigitalSpy for instance https://forums.digitalspy.com/discussion/960586/wrong-type-of-drive-in-humax-9200/p1
 
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