Hi,

Well the dreaded has finally happened, last night I went into the Recorded Programmes and it was blank The HDD still shows that it's about 75% full.

I'm at work so I don't have the time to sift through this whole thread, but maybe some of the techies could answer my queries;

- Will the 1min trick work if, between the time of noticing the problem and now a scheduled recording has taken place?
- My wife's really upset at loosing some complete TV series that she's not even watched, is there any other way of recovering the data?
- Maybe this one's for marc, you mentioned in post 319 that the next update in a couple of days time will ensure that the the recording list is kept in the cached memory by the memory management software, does this mean that the chances of this problem recurring is reduced?

I've seen some other posts that seem to indicate that the lost recordings occured when the hummy was on/paused/recording etc. may I add that in my case this problem appeared as such; Wife was watching a recorded prohgram in the afternoon, she put the hummy in standby when she finished. When I came home after work I switiched on and when straight into the record list only to find it blank.

Apart from this problem (which in the wife's eyes is major) I've only ever had one or two lockups and I'm generally very happy with the machine.

The scheduled recording will probably have overwritten at least one recording.

I would imagine that the 1 min trick will still work with the remaining recordings. You will not be able to view all the recovered recordings on the box unless all your recordings are from one channel and you use that channel for the 1 min recordings. However you should be able to transfer them to pc and edit them with ProjectX. See AskPhil's post on the previous page.

It worked for me last week.

Thats how I understand the 1 minute trick recovers the lost recordings. As Sue_C says, the new trick recordings you make that can *not* be viewed on the hummy can be transferred to a PC to recover following the procedure documented by AskPhil here and on the hummy.org.uk FAQ.

If you are 'up' for trying this procedure perhaps when the time comes to try it out you can have access to the PC for possible hand holding/support from here. I think the general consensus is that the more you use the PVR following this problem and before following 'the procedure' files are being overwritten by new recordings and new buffer maybe.

There were changes made by Humax to resolve the problem they found which causes the recordings table (or whatever it is) to loose track of the recordings on the hard disk. This change is going into this weekends new software release and everyone concerned is hoping this will do the trick and Humax will be keeping their eye out for how this pans out. With compression not being the cause of lost recordings on those other PVRs with this problem I wonder now if something similar happening on the hummy is happening on them too.

So, let me get this straight, if I do the 1 min trick to recover the recordings on my disk that I've made on BBC1 for example, I cannot do the same on BBC2 for the recirdings made on BBC2. (forgive me as I've not got much techie experience)

The 1 min trick didn't work for me

When I did the 1 min recordings last week the recovered programmes didn't come back in any particular order, so it wasn't possible to match the channel to the recording being recovered. If you've recorded mostly, say, BBC1 it would be worth doing all the 1 min recordings on BBC1. Any recordings recovered which were not originally BBC1 would have to be transferred to the PC via elinker, edited with ProjectX and watched on PC or written to DVD.

I have wondered what would happen if the progs were edited in ProjectX, saved as .ts files, and then transferred back to the Humax box. Has anybody tried this, would they then be watchable?

I did try editing a couple of recordings while they were still on the box to see if I could remove the first 1 min and whether they would then be watchable, but that didn't work.

Hi,

Thanks for the advise, I tried the 1min trick, but it didn't work and I don't think I'm techie enough to be messing about with PC transfers, ProjectX etc. thanks anyway.

Marc, you mentioned earlier in this thread that the Humax guys were working on a recovery tool, do you when/if this will be available?

To be fair Birdie it does sound fairly technical (at least on the face of it) having to do the workaround with the PC/ProjectX way. I think one of Son_t goals with the work he and phew are doing on the hard drive tools is lost recordings.

Humaxs tool was getting more and more attention because Humax was getting nowhere fast with fixing the problem. I got the feeling their preference was to spend resources on fixing the cause rather than creating a workaround for if it should happen. Hence why I dont think the tool will happen unless this is a problem they are still having trouble curing. They were having trouble with a tool and had worked on a couple of them (I dont know what the technical or commercial problems were) before getting a big breakthrough with the actual cause of the problem.

Thanks Marc.

I'd also like to thank everyone else that's given advice, cheers

Hi

Since my original post with a procedure for recovering lost files, I noticed it is possible to view the raw recovered file on the PC using VLC Media Player. The software played the 1 minute recording and the recovered programme followed afterwards.

For those who don't need to create DVD's and are happy to watch the programme on the PC , you could avoid having to use Project X. Try opening the unprocessed file in VLC Media Player.

I have only tried this on one occasion so I don't know if VLC Media Player will work every time.

Let's hope with the 1.00.06 software we won't have any more reports of losing all recordings.

Phil

So has anyone lost all their recordings with the new firmware?

My observation - having observed for a long time Lets say there was an average of about 10 reports since November 2005 per month between the 4 main forums (DS, R&T, Hummy and AVf). There have not been 'any' reports on those forums since the software update was released at the end of May. So at the very least, and for the first time, this is a significant change to what we were seeing month in month out up to the release of the last software update. Its encouraging.

Agreed Marc - not definitive proof of course, but a very encouraging sign.

Hopefully you are going to wait a long time for answer!.

Marc - as you are very close to the workings of the 9200T - was there a specific mention in the M ay firmware release of a fix to the dreaded problem? or would Humax keep the fix quiet becasue they didn't really own up to this problem existing in the first place?

I've not lost any recordings since 8th January, when I was given a replacement machine. Long may it continue but I would really like to know properly if it's fixed or not. Then I'll be able to stop holdiong me breath when I access the Recorded Programs list. (I'm operating the 09 loader and latest software. The auto padding introduced in May is great!)

Dai.

As Marc appears to be offline at the mo.

In the release notes for the 1.00.06 release it states the following:

'Modified Memory Management for HDD information loss'

Without going into to much detail, what Humax found was there could be a situation arise where there was a memory leak between the cached, and uncached memory areas.

Barry - thanks for the info. That makes sense. Do we give a prize to the first that reports programme loss with the new software? or shall we do a collective sigh!

(BTW- I see you're located in Plymouth. Lovely place. I went to the UNI there (then Polytechnic) 1982-1986 to do my degree. Lived in St Judes, Mannamead, Mutley Plain, North Road East..and many many student flat floors!! Passing through Plym tomorrow on the way to France, can't wait to see the old place)

Collective sigh, but let us be positive, and say it won't be required

You won't recognise the place, especially around the Poly, Mutley Plain. Big redevelopement ongoing.

Hi,

Maybe someone could advise me.

I suffered the dreaded lost recording bug just before the latest OTA update. I tried recovering the programmes but had little success, what I realise now is that I should have formatted the HDD at this point to give me a clear disk as at the time of the lost recordings it was about 75% full. I forgot to do that and now between me and the wife we've got about 30 recorded programmes on the HDD and it says it's almost full, we know it's not 'cos a large block of that is the 'lost' files that cannot be retreived. My questions are;

- Should I not record any more programmes, get it back to zero recording and then format?
- I've now got access to a laptop, is there any way I can link it to the hummy and delete the inaccessable files?
- Have a laissez faire attitude and hope that new recording will eventually overwrite the inaccessable files? (surely this will show 100% full for a certain time?)
- Any other suggestions?

Thanks in advance,
Martin.

I think it a good idea to get the disk formatted as soon as convenient. Perhaps watch what you want earlier rather than later from your playlist or transfer them to the laptop.

Perhaps phew or son_t can comment asto the feasibility of 9200treadfiles utility they are working on for recordings on the disk but not in the recordings table.

I'd recommend re-formatting your disk. You get peace of mind, and you recover all that inaccessible disk space. Why not archive the programmes you want to keep off to VCR first, and then hit that re-format button!

I would agree with other people suggesting re-formating ASAP but one short-term thing worth considering is checking the programs you haven't watched yet

My understanding is that after losing all your recordings each new recording overwrites an old one - but if the new one is shorter than the old one then it leaves the end of the old one on there - this is the gist of the "2 min recording fix"

eg It may be that you had a 2 hour film that's been replaced by a halfhour sitcom and if you edit the file, split it and delete the second file you might get some space back while you archive to the PC/VHS

Hope that makes sense

Regards


David

Interesting David, I'll try that and let you all know.

Cheers!! (again)
Martin

Hello Marc

I have been thinking about this... and can't seem to come to any firm ideas...

When a format is done on the Hummy, it is just the layout info and the tables (index and FAT) that get written to the HDD. It does not 'format' the HDD like what a Windows (long) format does - i.e. check, mark, and write info on all parts of the HDD...

Obviously we know even less than what Humax know when a 'lost of all recordings' (LOAR) occurs, and they don't seem to know a lot! Even with all the hard disk analysis info we have obtained... explaining why the 1 minute recordings can rescue some of the lost programmes is a complete puzzle...

Looking at all the evidence, when the LOAR occurs, I think it is just the information in the index table that is screwed up. The information there point to where the recordings starts, the EPG info are held, and the segments of the recordings. If a format is done, then I guess the Hummy continues to write data into this 'corrupted' table and continues to work. If this is the case, then obviously this table is not in an ideal state and weird things might happen...

I suppose we can analyse a HDD that has suffered a LOAR and gather information (backwards) to re-create the index table but to be able to do this we would probably break the HDD further before being able to mend it...

phew has told me he isn't going or doesn't want to develop further tools for the Hummy in this vein (he is more inclined poke at the firmware rather write tools and programs)... so someone else with a bit of low level disk analysis skills would need to take this project on... Anyone?

Hi,

Found a few recordings that the wife had done that were about 10mins long, but when I played them and hit the play button it stated the length was actually 1 hrs, 1.5hrs etc, only thing was that the portion of the recording that was after the initial 10mins was blank and had the "scrambled channel" bar on it. But I deleted the files and freed up about 20gb rather that the 2/3gb it stated it was.

Cheers!!


On your post above son_t you say that when you hit the format button it doesn't format the drive like a PC would (understandable) but would the drive "appear" to be 100% available in th HDD Status menu option (whith the exception of the 8gb system files) after a format?


Martin.