Symptoms of a failing HDD?

amjl2000

Member
I've been experiencing problems that appear to have come on rather suddenly.
(relating to the HDR-T2.. in case you think I'm going to get rather personal!)
Symptoms are:
  • Playback of recorded programmes: Humax crashes, reboots (says CRASHING on front display, or similar). This occurs at a random time after power on, but then seems to happen frequently after that. This has not happened the last couple of days, but has been replaced with:
  • Playback of recorded programmes: Audio and video freeze, requiring hardware power reset - wife said 8 times during Holby, but no specific time interval.
  • Live television hangs - picture freezes, but audio continues, requires hardware power reset.
  • Playback of mp4 video from external drive - this also froze once too, requires hardware power reset.

Obviously, the hardware reset is necessary as the box is unresponsive to the remote.

What I've tried:
  • Disconnected network, disabled sharing etc.
  • Upgraded the CFW to the latest supported version (i'm on 3.03).
  • Run the fix-disk from the telnet facility (or is it disk-fix?) - short test completed, no error.
  • Checked internet for similar symptoms.
The crash.log tells me nothing except a timestamp of when a crash occurred (doesn't seem to list all instances).
The Hard disk info says

1 Raw_Read_Error_Rate POSR-- 162411223 117 099 006 Pre-fail Always -

3 Spin_Up_Time PO---- 0 095 095 000 Pre-fail Always -

4 Start_Stop_Count -O--CK 9940 091 091 020 Old_age Always -

5 Reallocated_Sector_Ct PO--CK 0 100 100 036 Pre-fail Always -

7 Seek_Error_Rate POSR-- 123054040 081 060 030 Pre-fail Always -

9 Power_On_Hours -O--CK 4306 096 096 000 Old_age Always -

10 Spin_Retry_Count PO--C- 0 100 100 097 Pre-fail Always -

12 Power_Cycle_Count -O--CK 4971 096 096 020 Old_age Always -

184 End-to-End_Error -O--CK 0 100 100 099 Old_age Always -

187 Reported_Uncorrect -O--CK 0 100 100 000 Old_age Always -

188 Command_Timeout -O--CK 0 100 100 000 Old_age Always -

189 High_Fly_Writes -O-RCK 1 099 099 000 Old_age Always -

190 Airflow_Temperature_Cel -O---K 50 050 041 045 Old_age Always In_the_past

194 Temperature_Celsius -O---K 50 050 059 000 Old_age Always -

195 Hardware_ECC_Recovered -O-RC- 162411223 051 028 000 Old_age Always -

197 Current_Pending_Sector -O--C- 0 100 100 000 Old_age Always -

198 Offline_Uncorrectable ----C- 0 100 100 000 Old_age Offline -

199 UDMA_CRC_Error_Count -OSRCK 0 200 200 000 Old_age Always -


(can't see a good way to format the above, sorry)

The old_age and pre-fail concern me a bit.. the box is 2.5years old with pretty much daily use.

I'm hoping someone can come along and be fairly certain of a HDD failure - replacing this would be preferable to buying a new box. Is this likely?
Or, is there anything else I can check? I'm reluctant to do a factory reset right away, though could be the next thing on my list when I have some more free time.

Cheers
Al
 
That disk doesn't look in bad shape. The 'pre-fail' and 'old_age' comments are just saying what those attributes would indicate if their threshold were exceeded, which it hasn't been.

If you have only run a short disk check, then you need to run the full fix-disk process. That's option 1 on the maintenance mode telnet menu.
See Black Hole's guide for more details: http://hummy.tv/forum/threads/steps-for-repairing-a-disk-of-unknown-faults.3082/

I'd also follow Black Hole's standard guide to troubleshooting crashing faults:
http://hummy.tv/forum/threads/steps-for-resolving-hdr-fox-crash-reboot-issues.5320/
 
Thanks guys, I'll do a full fix-disk overnight tonight, and report back. I have more confidence in the HDD, hopefully I don't end up with other failing hardware!
I was following BH's guide, I think I did most of it based on the the initial symptoms (Section 2).. which led me to the telnet diagnostics. Great to have such tools and guidance :)
 
I've done a fix-disk -x-c and a long self test. We'll see how it goes now.
Incidentally, after the fix-disk -x-c (friday night) the box seemed to operate well for over an hour on saturday. So fingers crossed :)
 
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