Hello,

Firstly, apologies for giving a lot of background info, but I don't know what might help diagnose / fix the problem:

I've got two 9200Ts, and used humaxrw to transfer recordings from one to the other.

Both drives were physically removed from their units and plugged into a desktop PC as a second hard drive, one at a time (not enough space / ribbon cable / power connectors to attach both simultaneously).

Disk 1 (source) only had list and get commands
Disk 2 (backup) had list, get, delete and put commands

Last night I put both drives back into their respective units, checked that both worked fine and all the copied recordings could be played on Humax 2 (the backup unit) and then, using the normal menus, deleted the duplicate recordings off Humax 1. I then recorded, played and deleted a brand new recording.

This morning Humax 1 showed no recorded programmes.

I removed the disk and checked it with humaxrw again. List (-l) says the record list is empty, with 80.7GB free space. List in recovery mode (-r -l) shows 39 recordings, some marked as ***Unknown***.

I tried swapping the record lists, but it said that _record_list_, _rl_backup_ and _rl_tmp_ didn't exist (though it did then claim to have swapped them). Doing a normal list again showed no records.

Putting it back in the unit, the HDD Control page on the Record menu says it's 52.3% free, with 80.8GB free, 65.4GB used, which is about right for the recordings that should be left on there.

For additional info, about a week ago, the unit stopped recording programme info with new recordings, which is what prompted me to do some backing up.

So...

* Have I done something wrong / might I have corrupted the record list during removal and return of the drive?

* Is there anything I can do to get these programmes back other than copy them using recovery mode, and go through the process of creating hre files using ts2hrw?

* Is there another programme that I should be using instead?

Any help / answers gratefully received at this point!

Thanks.

Firstly thanks for providing a very comprehensive description of what symptoms you have seen and what steps you have taken. It is very refreshing.

I don't think you have done anything wrong. From your description the first box was suffering from a well known problem where the file system starts to become corrupted and gets progressively worse long before you copied things off. I think it has now moved to its final stage where the list of recordings is destroyed. This can happen at any time once corruption has started.

I think that is the only realistic option.

Not that I am aware of.

Martin,

Thank you for the quick answer.

I've copied all the recordings that were on the drive to my PC, so should now be able to reformat the drive.

Is it sufficient to just install in the Humax, and format there, or should I do anything else with it while it's still in the PC e.g. to try and find bad sectors (we're reaching the limits of my current understanding!)?

Thanks.

Format it in the PC, do a full format not a quick format, doesn't matter if it is FAT or NTFS then run chkdsk and see if any bad sectors are reported; if they are the disk is reaching end of life, if not you are good to go. Then put it back in the Humax which will format it again.

I think the lesson from this is leave well alone,these machines are not designed to be taken apart then re-assembled

Why ever not?

How on earth do you come to that conclusion? The first box was taken apart because it was exhibiting signs of a developing problem. What I assume were vital recordings were saved. If nothing had been done then before long I can guarantee that everything would have been lost.

I have taken a fair number of Humax PVRs apart and in every single case they have had full functionality when reassembled.

Martin,

Thanks again for the help.

I was a bit puzzled as to how to format and check the drive because it wasn't appearing in Windows, but remembered I had a programme called Minitool Partition Wizard still installed. That recognised the drive as unallocated, so I set it as NTFS, formatted, and then ran the surface scan. It took ages, but came up clean.

Once the drive was visible in Windows I ran the standard disc tools error checker, which also found nothing.

After checking the drive appeared in the Humax, I put it back in the PC to reload the old recordings. Done that, and the (non-recovery mode) list command works fine.

The only thing is, they are all named "Recovered unknown - TS2HRW".

As an experiment, I edited the hre file, and put the actual programme name in instead. I was careful to overwrite the exact same number of characters (27), but the recording now has a load of spaces and random characters in it.

Is there a way to edit the hre file successfully, so that I can transfer the recording titles without having to reinput them using the painstaking edit mode in the Humax?

You obviously know what your doing Martin but as you well know the problem is the ones who "think" they know what their doing

No I am sorry I still disagree. What you claimed was "machines are not designed to be taken apart then re-assembled". I see no evidence for this claim when I look at 9200. The lid can be removed with a cross-head screwdriver; internally the layout is very like a PC with main board, power supply, hard drive and cables running to various ports and ancillaries (eg the front panel display/clock board). Each of these components can be removed by detaching cables and removing (obvious screws) and catches.

There are consumer devices on the market where the manufacturers have made things difficult for untrained people to disassemble. Look at the tear down reports on an iPhone 5 for instance. I assume the intent is to maximise the service and repair income at Apple Stores.

In this particular case the user has now put everything back together and restored full functionality. Similarly look at the thread on the clock board problem with the 9200. A very large number of people with a wide range of skills have taken their 9200 apart, cleaned the clock board, put it back together and restored full functionality.

I agree that there will always be people who do not feel that they have the skills to work on electronics and these people will either buy new boxes when it breaks or send it to Humax for repair or to a (hopefully) knowledgeable local repair shop. However people who come on Forums are typically rather more inquisitive and looking for ways to fix things themselves. I would not like them to form the impression that there is anything particularly difficult about the repair process.

Bob,

I do understand your point, and it's a valid one, but let me give you some background.

I'm not a complete novice who just thought 'let's unscrew the lid and see what I can find', I'm an engineer. I spent 16 years working at the National Physical Laboratory, during which time, amongst other things, I repaired custom build electronic modules for radiation detection counters. I also spent quite some time providing PC support to these systems.

That was, however, a while back (initially we were still using DOS v5), so I'm not naive enough to think that I automatically know what I'm doing with systems developed more recently. I have taken PCs apart, to a limited extent, but I'm more comfortable with software than hardware.

To be honest, I was pretty certain I was doing everything right with the humaxrw software. I asked the question "Have I done something wrong" not because I thought the answer would be yes, but to make it clear that I'm not just someone who thinks that they are right all the time, a) because I'm not, and b) because a little humility goes a long way when asking for help.

Similarly, using the phrase "we're reaching the limits of my current understanding" wasn't because I didn't have a clue what to do, but because I thought it might better elicit a more comprehensive reply (which it did. Martin, again, thank you!).

Hopefully this should have all been pretty obvious from the structured / systematic way I wrote my first enquiry.

Anyway...

At this point I'm pretty happy with the state of my Humax box. The one thing I'm not happy about, is having to rename all those recovered recordings manually.

If anyone can provide a solution to my last question I would be enormously grateful. If not, well this forum has already been a great help, and I shall just accept the next step as a mild inconvenience!

I think the only person who is likely to be able to help is xyz321, the author of humaxrw. I get the impression that he doesn't come here very often these days. Where you will find him is over at the hummy.tv forum. I suggest repeating your question there. These days he is much more involved with the development of the Custom Firmware for the HDR-FOX T2. I have always found him helpful so if your question doesn't get an answer after a couple of days then send him a PM (in hummy.tv terminology "start a conversation").

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