Hi all,

My parents' 9200T keeps coming up with "Disk Error". We've tried the usual reset (disconnect aerial, '0000' etc) but it fails again a few hours later.

Before we plump for a replacement HD, is it possible to reformat the drive without taking it out of the box? Or do we need to take it out and put it in a PC to format? If so, what should it be formatted as, FAT32?

Many thanks,

:-Joe

Persistent disk errors of this sort certainly suggest that the drive is on the way out, and I'm not sure that reformatting on a PC would sort this.

If the error occurs during playback and is repeated when playing back the same programme it might be possible to prolong the life of the disk by not deleting the offending recording but renaming it to something distinct and leaving it alone. Maybe there's just one error on a particular part of the drive.

Unfortunately I don't think it's a specific programme, because the Disk Error just comes up after watching live television for a while.

If it can't be formatted inside the device, I will take it out and format it in a PC. I'd rather try that first before splashing out on a new drive.

You can format inside the device
Menu>Record>HDD control>Format
but this is not an in depth format and only takes a few seconds.
If it does not fix your problem, then you can remove the HDD and perform a full format on a PC which may identify any bad sectors, or use the dedicated Seagate tools.
If it is OK, when you return the HDD to the box, it will ask you to refomat to the Humax system.

Good luck!

That is an AWESOME nugget of advice! A big thanks. Maybe I should have tried this, and could have prevented repeated formating and subsequent losses of 'good' programmes!



Is that likely? Would one expect if one sector of the drive has failed, maybe others will follow the same slippery slope of doom?
Last edited by black_thunder : 30-12-2010 at 19:00

I'll try that out and let you know. Thanks!

The important thing is that if you format it in a PC use chkdsk afterwards and see if it reports any bad sectors. If it does then the disk should be replaced as the Humax assumes that the disk will not have any bad sectors (which is a reasonable assumption until all the spare sectors are used).

I'm on OS X so I'll either use Disk Utility or fsck - but thanks for the warning. Is it FAT32?

The Humax uses a proprietary file system; the idea of formatting in a PC is to try and map out any marginal sectors so you can use any file systen you like; the Humax will prompt to format again when the disk is put back. The check for bad sectors will show whether there are any spare sectors left. I must confess that I have switched to using the Seagate Seatools for DOS which comes as a bootable ISO (on a PC).

Ah okay, so what you are saying is that no matter what I format it to, it will need reformatting when it's put back in the Humax box anyway? So it's just to check for bad sectors?

Yes; but note that the Humax simply writes a blank file system which only takes a few seconds.


Not exactly; the idea is that a full format will test every sector on the disk and should map out any marginal sectors except when there are no spare sectors left which is when bad sectors start to be reported.

Would you recommend a format type to use?

It's like washing the disc, so 'intensive' is the one to look for
It will (should) take a long time as well.

Ah no, sorry I meant type as in "FAT32" or "NTFS"... I know you said it doesn't matter because the box reformats it anyway, but didn't know if I could just format it HFS+ (I'll probably have the most options for doing an 'intensive' format if I can).

Just to let you know, my Dad has done the "format" option from the menu, and will see if that helps first.

Thanks for all your help!

Modern SATA and IDE disks are not perfect, in the old days the defect list was printed on a label on the drive and you had to laboriously type in the defects head/cylinder/sector ....these days it's all automated and hard disks have spare cylinders which allow you to map out the bad sectors and give the impression of a defect free hard disk....the truth of the matter is though that all disks have defects and bad sectors...when a drive develops a bad sector that cannot be corrected by ECC it won't map it out until the sector is written again and fails on a write command.....there are various ways to do this.... In linux it's relatively easy with the following

dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sdX bs=64MB

that will write zero's from the start of the drive to the end of the drive, obviously you will have to change the sdX to whatever the drive has been allocated by the operating system, and I cannot say enough how RIGHT you have to be about the correct /dev/sdX ....DD is very unforgiving it won't prompt you are you sure.....are you really really sure ....it will just write out zero's at the full data rate of the drive and if you're talking SATA then in less than a few seconds you'll have overwritten everything important on the wrong drive.

Seagate tools does a similar thing, there is no such thing as a low level format any more it's simply a method of kicking the bad sectors into touch with the drives firmware.

I've revived many hard disks this way, the only ones that totally fail are the ones where either the electronics have failed OR sector zero the first part of the disk has developed a fault, that cannot be mapped out, because partition and boot information sit on sector zero...if that's got a bad sector throw your drive away pointless even trying to fix it.... I've got a 500 GB drive in my Humax 9160T that has got a bad sector or two, I'm whipping it out tonight and zeroing it with DD, I'm confident it will fix the jumpy playback at certain points in recordings as they hit the same bad sectors .....Just thought I'd share my experience....Humax use their own filesystem its based on EXT2, but it's not mountable on a linux box, I suppose it's possible if we knew the structure, the good thing is DD can be used again to copy a similar sized hard disk to another AND keep the humax format....

dd if=/dev/old-disk of=/dev/new-disk bs=64MB

will clone the old disk to the new disk at the sector level so everything is preserved including your recordings... Clonezilla can probably do it as well, but I prefer to use DD because it's just faster.

Haven't got linux ? simple just download a live CD/DVD version burn it to DVD or CD and boot that in your Windows box DD comes standard in most if not all linux distributions... booting a live version will not destroy your Windows system.... just be VERY careful to make sure you are squirting the data from and to the RIGHT hard disk.


I used to be a hardened Windows user many years ago, I never thought I'd jump ship....but once you do, you'll realise linux does things faster, better and with less hassle than Windows ever did or can do

It is nothing like EXT2. See http://humaxdisk.wikispaces.com/Disk+Format for a bit of information. You can use humaxrw to read and write files if you have the disk connected to a PC running Linux or Windows.

There is a known problem with the 9300 and 9150 machines (9160?, I hope you're a bit more careful with your DD commands ) that causes jumpy playback on certain programmes so you might be disappointed. The programmes that are almost guaranteed to give problems are Family Guy and American Dad on BBC3. Please let us know the results though.