Thanks for the update marc, much appreciated. Do you know if a recovery tool is likely to be a realistic prospect? I ask because if not, I want to reformat my HD but if there's any prospect of recovering lost recordings, I might not bother.

I'm sorry to say this, but that criticism could justifiably be levelled at you.

Your experiences with Humax are vastly at odds with what many others in this forum have experienced. All people like Paul Shirley and myself are trying to do is express their dissatisfaction with the service they have received from Humax. By reporting these matters on this forum it hopefully gives prospective customers a foretaste of what to expect if things go wrong.

Be sorry all you like Adrian but my work on this forum is consitant and I always encourage people to find out the same things for themselves. This is especially important now there are a couple of people here who are trying to make it look like I am a fraud so that their messages are better exploited. I say this to you, if I am *not* a liar you can only benefit from any modest things I am able to bring to this community; if it turns out I lie to you all your cause will be strengthened so dont sweat it. My bad or good experiences are shared here with the the rest of us. If I choose to keep on about anything that is just bad like a bug or whatever, how many times would you like me to keep telling you? I prefer to just keep using the forum as normal rather than select one message that is either good or bad and repeat it over and over again.

Now they have a cure being persued and readied for a release i dont think they will do any more work in the very short term on a tool. Its something that needs to be asked i think to find out what the position will be or when they will know. Apparantly engineers got through two tools and were having problems but 'cure' work started to gain a lot of momentum anyway and needed to be pursued as you can imagine.

I'm not accusing you of being a liar Marc. No doubt you are passing on information received from your contacts in Humax in good faith. It's just that I am sceptical of some of the things they claim to be doing, and that they only divulge this information to certain individuals, like yourself. For example, if Humax really have found a fix for the lost recordings problem, why haven't they shared the good news with those customers who have been directly affected by it rather than ignoring their emails?

Well I've given you the latest thinking from inside info. No doubt once they are happy and the plans are firmed up properly in terms of a release they will make their own decision as to when to tell the world. If you find yourself skeptical for some reason dont loose any sleep over it - if its true be happy; if its not, you didnt think it was true in the first place anyway

Well, its now happened for the 3rd time for me.
The OH now thinks I'm a complete dipstick for keeping this thing.

Spoke to Humax and they seem to think they are weeks away from releasing a cure for this.

I know I'm a fool but I'm still going to hold out for the update as apart from this problem I love the machine to bits.

Can you think of a common operation that might be causing this, such as using elinker to manipulate the files on the Humax, i know 3 people with boxes and none have lost any recordings. Some people posting here have lost stuff once and i believe very few have lost more than once (Paul excepted). 3 is an extraordinary number.

Well I've already lost all the recordings twice, and fully expect it to happen a 3rd time. In my case it seems to occur when a). I've got over 70 recordings occupying about 75% of the HD and b). when I've made an unscheduled recording i.e. just pressed record to capture the current programme.

I suppose while it is still entirely possible to have this happen once, then I guess that means that once you have formatted and started again the same risk applies to it happening, until there is a fix? I think this serious but low chance issue tends to only happen once to the overwhelming majority of people just because there was a low chance of it happening in the first place so to strike more than once is even rarer but must still be possible without something available to have fixed the problem.

bigbadtone,
There is now a workaround, which although has been mentioned in various degrees of detail in the past, is pretty well documented I think on the FAQ section of hummy.org.uk( http://www.hummy.org.uk/forum/viewtopic.php?t=515 ).

@Paul Shirley
I have tried searching through the threads and I cant actualy find the replication details to follow to loose recordings. Can you put a post in here so I can loose my recordings as I want to do a lot of work on the workaround side of things.

You are the only person who has said they can replicate this easily but I have tried looking so apologies if I have missed it in an obvious place in advance!

If anyone else has some free time and doesnt mind trashing all their recordings we can compare notes and try to get this process as polished as possible.

I'll let you know as soon as I can help... the missus currently has some stuff, and it's just more than my lifes worth!

Spelling "lose" correctly might help.
(Sorry, couldn't resist.)

This stupid keyboard! you got me

I can help you out with mpeg4s of Bleak House, if you PM me. I might even have vobs or TS files if I *really* hunt.

Ian

Mine also seems to be occurring when I have a large number of files (80+).
Not even attempted to use e-linker so no connection there I'm afraid - I'm just unlucky I guess.


Thanks Marc - I'll give it a go

This only worked for one program for me, and then it was by accident not design. I don't consider it a work around.

My box lost its recordings after a lock up during a recording, which required a re-boot, then the box only seemed to have one working tuner so I did a restore factory defaults (not a re-format) and it lost everything despite the manual and users on here telling me I wouldn't. (The full details are on this thread, a while ago). My machine became so unstable - frequently locking up when using the buffer as chase play, that eventually I re-formated.

Looks like its going to need more focus and effort to explore what can be done with these methods.

What we do need to know is the way to make this happen on tap so that it can be progressed. With Pauls post (hopefully imminent) we should be able to move this on in a way that we have never been able to do before with this type of major bug.

With respect to the conditions causing this type of failure, my box had just been switched out of standby to watch recordings when we noticed the recordings had all gone. We weren't using instant record (we rarely do), accessing text or using interactive features. The HD was not nearly full (less than 30GB). The only thing we might have done slightly differently to normal was switching to standby whilst in text mode earlier in the day.

I mentioned we managed to get 4 recordings back. I followed the following procedure:

As the programmes we most wanted were ITV1 recordings, I programmed a series of 5 1-minutes recordings, each 1 minute apart then checked to see if anything had been recovered before moving on to another series of 5 recordings. Most resulting recordings displayed a 'channel scrambled' message after the first minute which I suspect indicates that the 1-minute recording had been made over a non ITV1 show. Eventually, we managed to recover three ITV1 recordings and switched our efforts to Channel 4 recordings, managing to get back an episode of 'Grand Designs'. It was rather hit and miss, but we did get back 2.5 hours that we really wanted to watch.

The method by which I recovered 17 'lost' programs (posted on the hummy board) did not claim to be a full 'workaround' but was reasonably successful for me and should be helpful for other people who have suffered from the most common 'lost recordings' problem

By this, I mean the problem where a large number of recordings (commonly 60-80) are visible one day and have completely disappeared the next day (often a Fri-Sat overnight) with no other apparent malfunction

What I am suggesting is that in these cases SOME recordings are recoverable, but probably limted to recordings on one (user selected) channel only (as with alickr)

The method depends on the recordings and indexes still being intact on the hard disc

Where other (more complex) fault scenarios have caused the loss or corruption of the indexes themselves or of some or all previously recorded programs then possibly the recordings are not recoverable by this (or any other ?) method (as with Taddict37)

As more time passess AFTER the initial loss, the chances of recovery diminish as 'lost' programs are overwritten by new recordings - eventually none of the original recordings will be recoverable

Unfortunately, until Humax have a patch that 're-builds' the 'recorded programs' table or someone works out the index and file layouts on the disc this is all we have, hope it helps

Eddieorz

Hi.. Paul, I don't know if you're still around. We're making some progress with the hard disk format. I was wondering if you could post the details of how to replicate this issue (I seem to remember you saying you could reproduce it reliably). We can then take a look at the HDD and see if we can figure it out.

Many thanks

Martin

I lost all recordings - and then recovered them all.

After 6 months of trouble free use of my 9200T I experienced the "lost all recorded programmes" fault. I have used techniques I picked up from these forums to recover as many programmes as I wanted.

If you are prepared to invest a LOT of time in recovery, in my experience it can be done. It helps if you have previously had success in using the Media E-Linker to copy files to a PC , and processing the file using software like Project X.

I will describe the process I went through.

As soon as you realise the recorded programmes are lost, I suggest not using the Hummy. Put it on a non-broadcasting or teletext channel to prevent any further use of the hard disk.

Delete all scheduled recordings (after writing them down if necessary)

Use the 1 min recording trick. Select one channel to record that will match up with some programmes that you have recorded. However this technique allows you to recover programmes regardless of what channel they were on.

Schedule as many recordings as you desire for just one minute on the chosen channel, one after the other. (You can do more than 20 simply by repeating the process later on.)

View each one. (You can save time by starting to view the earlier recordings while the later ones are still in progress).

You will get one minute of the program you just recorded and in most cases there will be a 'recovered' recording in the same file.

Press the i button on the remote while viewing to identify the recovered programme. If this was on the selected channel you can view it straight away on the Humax, otherwise it won't play back after the initial minute and it will only be accessible on a PC.

Every time you find a programme you want to recover, write down the numbered position on the list and the name of the programme.

When you are satisfied you have recovered enough, go into the recorded programmes menu and edit each file you want recovered. Go into the name of the programme and change the name to the one you wrote down earlier.

Use Media E-Linker to copy the files to your computer - when selecting the files to copy you will benefit at this stage from having renamed the files on the Humax. The copying is the most time consuming part of the process.

When you are sure you have finished copying everything you want, if necessary you can start using the box again. At this stage, it is a good idea to reformat the hard drive and then go back to the default setting using the install menu.

You won't be able to view the file on the PC (even in "Media Player Classic") unless you process the file first. I will describe use of "Project X" which is free and does the job fine, but I know some people use other software.

On the PC add the file in Project X.

It is very important you position the cursor after the end of the 1 minute recording so it is just at the start of the programme you want. Make use of the various buttons to go backwards and forwards. (Obviously you will have lost the 1st minute of your recovered programme)

Click the + sign with the pink border to mark the start point.

If desired you can also scroll to the end of the programme and click the + sign with the pink border again to mark the finish. (Commercial breaks could be removed using the same technique but I didn't want to give myself any additional work!)

Open the Process window, select " to m2P" and click the > icon to start the conversion.

The resulting file will have an .m2p extension - if is easier if you rename with a different name and with an .mpg extension.

You can now view the programme on your PC, or burn it to DVD.

I find it easier to close down Project X and start it up again before dealing with the next file.

I hope this is useful to people.

Phil
Last edited by AskPhil : 12-05-2006 at 01:06

Well done to those who have persevered and developed techniques to recover recordings. However, if I'd paid that much money for a machine that deleted files randomly and locks up whwnever there is an R in the month, I'd have got my money back under the Sale of Goods Act (the not fit for purpose bit) and waited until the problems were properly fixed. Surely the whole point of a recorder is to remove hassle from you life not add to it?

Thats true. You'd think these PVR manufacturers would stop releasing these things with bugs like that these days.

AskPhil, I read through your post and the process is very well expained. I'd love to be able to try it out. Is there a reason why the multiple recordings need to be one minute? Also, are you saying that you can set up say 20 recordings of 1 minute for one channel and it wil recover recordings that werelost from other other channels? - but just that its not apparant until you use the project x method at the end?