My Humax Forum » Freesat HD » HDR 1000, 1010, 1100S

Another HDR1000S with a "missing" disk

(49 posts)
  1. REPASSAC

    REPASSAC

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    No one has tried before.
    I will mention that I suspect that formatting the drive will not make any difference as several people have tried replacing the dive without success.

    | Fri 25 Mar 2016 6:52:07 #11 |
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    Pollensa1946

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    grahamlthompson - 11 hours ago  » ...Those who hve removed the disk and connected to a PC say the disk is OK, which would appear to rule out the sata hsard disk controller in the box...

    Since the two, disk and controller, are separate parts of the equation I'm perplexed as to how you arrived at that conclusion. Perhaps I'm missing something?

    | Fri 25 Mar 2016 8:31:38 #12 |
  3. grahamlthompson

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    _James_ - 12 hours ago  » 
    I just connected the drive to my laptop using a sata to USB adaptor and then mounted the drive in Windows using the program Ext2Fsd. I then simply copied the files from the mounted drive.
    I can't actually watch any of the recordings on my laptop but I thought that I might have been able to copy them back after formatting the drive.

    How do you know they are recordings ? Can you see the filenames and extentions ? Or is it just a block of data you have from the Video partition ?

    | Fri 25 Mar 2016 9:51:23 #13 |
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    _James_

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    _James_ - 13 hours ago  » 
    I just connected the drive to my laptop using a sata to USB adaptor and then mounted the drive in Windows using the program Ext2Fsd. I then simply copied the files from the mounted drive.
    I can't actually watch any of the recordings on my laptop but I thought that I might have been able to copy them back after formatting the drive.

    REPASSAC - 3 hours ago  » 
    No one has tried before.
    I will mention that I suspect that formatting the drive will not make any difference as several people have tried replacing the dive without success.

    I meant formatting the drive via the Settings/Storage menu on the Humax box. The option was available before I removed the hard drive to back up the recordings. I haven't made any changes to the files on the original drive, I didn't want to mess up any partitioning or lose any critical files.

    However, I have tried formatting a 2nd drive. It's an identical 500GB Seagate drive (ST3500312CS) that I've removed from an old Sky HD box that I had lying around. I tried it in my Humax as a blank drive with no file system and a 2nd time formatted as NTFS. Your suspicions are correct, I had no luck with a formatted drive.

    grahamlthompson - 58 minutes ago  » 

    _James_ - 12 hours ago  » 
    I just connected the drive to my laptop using a sata to USB adaptor and then mounted the drive in Windows using the program Ext2Fsd. I then simply copied the files from the mounted drive.
    I can't actually watch any of the recordings on my laptop but I thought that I might have been able to copy them back after formatting the drive.

    How do you know they are recordings ? Can you see the filenames and extentions ? Or is it just a block of data you have from the Video partition ?

    Yes, I can see the individual file names. They're using the format Program Name_Date_Time. There is a .hts, .nts and .hjm file for each recording.

    | Fri 25 Mar 2016 10:47:31 #14 |
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    tiacod

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    I did the same thing last night - my box hasn't been able to access the disc for several weeks and nothing has helped. Last night I took the disc out, connected it via USB to my mac and copied all the recordings off to another drive. I can confirm they are the recordings - the filenames match the programme titles. There are three files for each recording, one of which is large enough to be the recording - if I load it into VLC it tells me the length of the recording and that there are multiple audio/video streams in the file.
    Sadly, placing another drive into the Humax doesn't work either - the box refuses to acknowledge anything is connected. I've also tried powering the drive from an external power supply - so it seems it's the SATA controller on the Humax board that fails for some reason. I would guess you can restore these recordings to another box unless the encryption ties them to the specific box?

    | Fri 25 Mar 2016 10:50:58 #15 |
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    Pollensa1946

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    tiacod - 9 minutes ago  » ...so it seems it's the SATA controller on the Humax board that fails for some reason...

    That's a logical conclusion. The disk is electrically/mechanically good (lots of posters have confirmed that on their PC) so the cause must be attributable to the controller, either a hardware failure or some tolerance that the s/w cannot cope with. The real surprise is that Humax have failed to nail this down.

    | Fri 25 Mar 2016 11:03:25 #16 |
  7. grahamlthompson

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    Pollensa1946 - 4 minutes ago  » 

    tiacod - 9 minutes ago  » ...so it seems it's the SATA controller on the Humax board that fails for some reason...

    That's a logical conclusion. The disk is electrically/mechanically good (lots of posters have confirmed that on their PC) so the cause must be attributable to the controller, either a hardware failure or some tolerance that the s/w cannot cope with. The real surprise is that Humax have failed to nail this down.

    The fact that many boxes recover after a period left unpowered, would seem to indicate a software rather than a hardware issue.

    | Fri 25 Mar 2016 11:08:51 #17 |
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    tiacod

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    grahamlthompson - 18 minutes ago  » 

    Pollensa1946 - 4 minutes ago  » 

    tiacod - 9 minutes ago  » ...so it seems it's the SATA controller on the Humax board that fails for some reason...

    That's a logical conclusion. The disk is electrically/mechanically good (lots of posters have confirmed that on their PC) so the cause must be attributable to the controller, either a hardware failure or some tolerance that the s/w cannot cope with. The real surprise is that Humax have failed to nail this down.

    The fact that many boxes recover after a period left unpowered, would seem to indicate a software rather than a hardware issue.

    Agreed - having read more threads this morning it seems more likely, it's just you would expect a re-flash of the firmware to resolve such issues unless something is left resident which causes the problem.

    | Fri 25 Mar 2016 11:28:25 #18 |
  9. grumpybrush

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    [quote]
    Sorry don't get the logic of that statement. Self correcting software? All of the software will comprise of files. If a file is corrupted in some way then it stays that way until an uncorrupted version is applied in it's place it would not be corrected after a period of inactivity.
    Far more likely in my opinion is that some hardware component (disk controller, disk interface on the disk itself) somewhere is failing. That could recover if it works over temperature or gets a zap of low voltage (that condition may eventually corrects itself as the electrical state changes over time).
    Do Humax collect information about these issues? I expect that like any electronics manufacturer, they will change suppliers of certain components either because of non-availability, product changes or price. It may be a specific suppliers product causing the issue or a change in that component makers firmware.
    Is there a way these conditions can be supplied to Humax so they can try & build a picture & home in on the area causing the issue?

    | Fri 25 Mar 2016 11:29:15 #19 |
  10. grahamlthompson

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    grumpybrush - 4 minutes ago  » 
    [quote]
    Sorry don't get the logic of that statement. Self correcting software? All of the software will comprise of files. If a file is corrupted in some way then it stays that way until an uncorrupted version is applied in it's place it would not be corrected after a period of inactivity.
    Far more likely in my opinion is that some hardware component (disk controller, disk interface on the disk itself) somewhere is failing. That could recover if it works over temperature or gets a zap of low voltage (that condition may eventually corrects itself as the electrical state changes over time).
    Do Humax collect information about these issues? I expect that like any electronics manufacturer, they will change suppliers of certain components either because of non-availability, product changes or price. It may be a specific suppliers product causing the issue or a change in that component makers firmware.
    Is there a way these conditions can be supplied to Humax so they can try & build a picture & home in on the area causing the issue?

    NVram can hold data for a very very long time. If it gets corrupted and there is no way to reflash the specific locations it's entirely possible for the problem to eventually disappear. My box (a first generation) HDR1000S, (once lost all the recordings and in the end needed a format in December last year) has exhibited this particular issue, despite running for years without similar problems. This would further confirm the possibility it was introduced in a later software update.

    | Fri 25 Mar 2016 11:41:32 #20 |

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