Many thanks AskPhil

I wish I had realised that ProjectX could be used in this way

Unfortunately I have cleared all my old recordings now after recovering the ones I wanted on ITV3

Marc - 1 minute is a 'best compromise' less than 1 minute and the Humax will not always log the new recording , more than 1 minuteand you destroy more of the program you want to recover

... and I think the answer to your other question is that potentially recoverable recordings on other channels are NOT watchable on the Humax and also not recoverable on a PC using some software (I tried HDTVtoMPEG but not ProjectX) - ProjectX must be cleverer than most and DOES allow you to recover them

Right OK I'm with you. Out of interest I find that on recent test software Humax have reduced that 1 minute minimum for a recording to 30 seconds. But this is only practical for instant recordings as you cant schedule with seconds (only hours and minutes).

To answer your 2nd question myself - Yes. I set over 70 scheduled recordings all of Channel 4, and used the resulting files to recover programmes from a variety of different TV channels. Project X was needed to recover the programmes from any other channel other than Ch.4

Your first question has been well covered by the above posts.

I had this happen to me last night
day before i had deleted some long saved films (from xmas) and lo and behold - this evening an empty program list
tried the 1 min trick which would have recovered some stuff.

i have used projectX and Imago to demux - remux to .mpeg files before so could rescue some stuff - but then didn't bother, it'll all get repeated at some time.

not so bothered by losing the recordings (its only tv, i keep telling myself) more that the box that has been fantastic has let me down

surely humax could save the FAT file on move to standby and run a checksum on the data and save that as well. on startup they could compare the checksum with the 'live' programme list - if different, restore the saved FAT

anyway - i'll report to Humax, though i've ended up reformating the drive anyway and starting again. I was beginning to wonder if i would ever get to watch some of the stuff saved

oh well - roll on a fix,
marc - is there any chance that this is fixed in the latest release

Karl

I've seen some half rumours that the "lost all" is linked to deleting the 1st programme in the list, but this is maybe a some semi-religious juju.

However, in the spirit of superstition, I have a programme on Spike Milligan from last year sitting at the head of the list with instructions to all to leave it alone.

Ian

Hi Ian

i didn't actually delete the first (but did do the second) - i only removed them cos the disk was nearly full
my son is not too impressed that all the Thomas the Tank engines i recorded have gone but he didn't know that i'd ripped them off the box, split them into separate episodes and burnt them onto DVD - so now he's happy again
i have lots of space to fill now though so hopefully it won't happen again

Happened to us the day before yesterday. No obvious warning signs. Disk was about 65% full; had been fuller but a signifcant number of recordings were deleted about a week ago to free up some space. Have reformatted.

Hi Karl,
Humax were able to replicate the problem and see what was happening. I did ask what was causing it but I didnt understand any of it as it was very technical. The problem I have and Humax may have is how do they know it is a complete fix when it doesnt happen often and you dont know when it will next strike to set up a test.

I guess that when Humax successfully found a way to replicate this issue of loosing track of recordings on the disk that this was key. They can test their fix by applying the modified software installed on machines and then apply the same process used to relicate the problem again and see if it still happens. Their fix is working 100% every time when replicating the problem.

Well Humaxs' fix will probably be included in the new release that deals with lockups on MUX2 channels which is going OTA on the 3rd of June. They would probably like to keep testing it for a couple more months by the sounds of things but my question to them is at the end of the day, like with their lockups fix, how many weeks do you test a big problem for, especially when it is so urgent, before you know it has fixed the problem? And while that testing is taking place and carrying on being successful there are people who can still potentially loose their recordings the longer it goes on.

As 304 says -it's only tv - and if the programmes have been recorded off digital channels then they'll be along again soon.
I lost nearly 70 recordings. It was about 3 weeks before I tried to recover any and then I used the 1 Minute recording technique without the use of any computer. I have recovered 5 recordings that I have been able to watch. There were a lot of other recordings which attached themselves to the 1 minutes but they all came up with the message that they were scrambled or unavailable. I have tried again but I don't think any of the lost recordings are there any more.

After 6 months of almost faultless performance our box had also lost all its recordings yesterday. At that time the hard disk was almost full and had been for months. I think there were about 75 programmes, most of which would never have been watched anyway.

We followed the 1 minute recordings method to try to recover the programmes and I think that we recovered all of them as the last 10 recordings didn't have any extra time on the end. We record quite a variety of channels and programme recovery seems to be fairly random so we weren't able to match the channel being recorded to programme being recovered.

It is possible to tell which programme has been recovered, even if it won't play on the box, by pressing the "i" button while the first minute is playing. This made it possible to decide which programmes to keep and which to delete. After deleting things that we were never going to watch anyway we have ended up with 33 recovered programmes, 14 of which are watchable on the Humax, and 19 of which will have to be transferred to the PC if we decide that we want to watch them.

I have transferred a couple of programmes to the PC. VideoRedo can't open them so it will be necessary to use Project X to put them onto DVD. However, they can be viewed on the PC using VLC so it will probably be easier to connect the television to the PC using the tv-out on the PC. Not great quality but quicker.

The hard disk is now about 50% full - we haven't had that much free space for months! I've set a couple of things to record and will see how things go from here before deciding whether to reformat.

We decided to record Lost on the PC yesterday evening as we were busy recording our 1 minute programmes on the Humax. It managed to record 8 minutes and then stopped for no apparent reason - you really can't win can you. Luckily that does get repeated on Sunday. I wonder what the Humax will be doing by then.

Hi Marc

thanks for the update - any fix is better than none, even if it only stops a percentage of the losses. Good news that it may make the 3rd June release. As Sue_C has pointed out, I now have an empty box to fill up again - lost some films which may not be on again but can get those from Lovefilm if i'm that bothered

would be interesting to see if they had thought of saving the data and using checksums to validate
Ps is the EPG save on this software as well

Karl

I think so too. I think the same can be aplied with lockups although putting an on/off switch option on the box for MHEG/Interactive is a measure many people have been asking to be put in anyway just in case. As proved with the Topfield, the fix for lockups was eventually put in which is great, but its still possible to get lockups on the Topfield and is why many Topfield owners just leave MHEG switch off by default so they dont have to worry about it. The funny thing with the Humax is that even without a lockups fix many people arent troubled with lockups. Weird.


Saving the EPG was only a recent enhancement they have made so will not be included in time for the June 3rd release.

Marcdavis

Many thanksfor the update - if you can find out more about the source of the 'lost recordings' problem I would be very interested - I had a theory that it was some sort of automatic overnight 'housekeeping' procedure that caused it

SueC

glad to see someone used the 1 minute technique with a degree of success

Eddieorz.

Yes this is very pleasing. Thanks to you and to AskPhil for your previous posts. I've now uploaded several recordings to the computer and will be able to catch up with all those back episodes of Desperate Housewives

I chose the Humax so I'm feeling slightly responsible. Luckily most of my husbands programmes are still watchable on the box so he's not complaining yet. Here's hoping that the box behaves itself from now on.

I think the answer to Marc's comment is that it is the way we use the machine that causes the faults to kick-in.

So many 'cures' seem to involve usage as opposed to machine faults e.g. turn off the 'interactive'; don't fill the disk more than (what?) 60%; don't delete the 1st recorded prog; let the hard-disk stop spinning before Stand-By or Switch off; don't do over-lapping recordings on the same MUX; don't 'pad' recordings etc. All of these & more have been suggested as workarounds.

So may be the folk who don't get problems just watch 1 prog (live or recorded) and record another ! And if they haven't watched a recording in a couple of weeks they either delete it or transfer it off the Humax.

That's *not* what we paid for - of course. But perhaps that's what keeps them going when all about them ...

Anyone have a cure for defeatism !!

Fred

The deep healing power of alcohol?

The trigger for the "lost all" fault could be anything or nothing. Probably a race condition somewhere.

Let's just hope it gets fixed as the longer we're all exposed to the bug the more chance there is that it will bite everyone.

Ian

More importantly for Humax, the longer it takes for this bug to be squashed, the longer there will be potential puyers (me) who simply do not wish to contemplate explaining to their better-half that the new recording device 'forgets'.

I've done the same, have kept prog from last year, told the other half on pain of death don't deleate, has worked so far(touch wood again).

Eddie, Hi. I checked and my understanding is that the problem was caused by a memory management problem between the cached and un-cached memory. The Files system on the HDD uses the un-cached memory – and I am told all other modules use the cached memory. What seemed to happen on uncommon and unpredictable circumstances to their customers was some data in the cached memory was written to the un-cached memory. Humax needed to make modifications to memory management in the software. The good news is this WILL be included in the very next software update, however they dont want to drop this as an issue until reports completely disapear. To me that will be the real test.

Lost all my recordings when I switched the box on.
Luckily there wasn't much on the harddrive, so I am not too bothered, but let's hope this problem gets sorted out soon.

I've never used it so am not sure, but isn't there an option to 'lock' a recording to prevent deletion and/or make them read-only? That should prevent unintentional deletion shouldn't it?

I just lost over 60 hours of recordings.
Heres what happened.
I was watching the Grand prix this afternoon, I paused it for 20 minutes, I then returned and continued to watch it for say ten minutes, I had to go out so I hit record button (while it was still buffered) I have just returned to finish watching the GP and I only have Triangle form last night and the GP in my Video playlist.
i guess it didn't like me recording from a buffer

Using HDD COntrol, how full is your HDD?

If it is showing that say 50% is used then you could try some of the recovery methods mentioned earlier in this and other threads before you record any more to it.

Also some ideas here

Hi
Thanks I tried the minute recording test and I had no luck with it.
I decided to start afresh.

Any word on an update to cure this fault?

As per post #319 above the fix that prevents lost recordings should be included in the OTA update due in the next few days...