Like the idea for lock-up recovery.

When I lost all my recordings (within a few days of getting it back in November) there were only a handful of recordings. It has not recurred, and I did not reformat the drive at the time. Living with the lost space for the time being - there is never a good time to reformat!

Paul, lets move this along

The other polls seem to be working well!

Could we have a poll to find out.

How many time have you lost ALL your recordings...

0?

1?

2?

More than twice?

There's nothing like tempting fate...

Just as an aside, as far as I can tell the last update from Fusion (1.7.5, released in October) did fix this. The complication is only that since that date, 1.7.5 has never been transmitted again, and Fusion are still producing new machines with the older, more vulnerable software - for reasons known only to themselves. Manual updates are possible though, and as far as I'm concerned they leave the FVRT1xx rock solid afterwards.

FVRT200 owners are less fortunate, since a fixed version of their software has not yet been released - but they do have the option of a sideways-upgrade to 1.7.5, losing them a couple of their extra features but fixing this and other issues.

I tried this when it was posted, and it didn't work.

However.

How weird is this?
Tonight I recorded Eastenders (sorry). In the recorded program list it says program name, 33 mins (I padded), BUT when i started watching it it said BBC1 Strictly come dancing. I then noticed the time bar said 1hr 19 mins. There is 33 mins of EE, followed by a very old, possibly the first program I had lost, of Strictly come dancing - although not the whole episode.

So whats that all about then??????????

It is obvious that my recordings ARE still on the hard drive and that I simply need a recovery tool.

I am NOT re-formating for a while!!!

comments?!

Its a random process that depends on faults in the damaged filesystem (from you losing the recordings) and how the machine actually tracks recordings. Get lucky and you recover some files straight away, unlucky and you could wait months to see anything.

There are at least 2 and possibly 3 different bits of code reading the filesystem in different ways and getting different results when the file system destroys itself. I've had more success recovering recordings from eLinker, when random chunks of disc get appended to new recordings eLinker can often retrieve them and you can then repair on a PC. The 9200 itself often can't play them at all or makes it very difficult.

I've always suspected the cause of the problems is a failure to keep these different filesystem 'views' in sync. Its very easy to trip it up in eLinker, simply following up the obvious failures in rename and sending to the box would lead Humax right to at least one very serious bug, with a good chance of finding the lost recordings screwup along the way.


Given Humax have abandonned that tool you'll be waiting for nothing. Looking at the simple things they can't get right you probably wouldn't like the mess they'd make of something this complex anyway.

My Humax has worked perfectly since I bought it in early December.
The software was updated on Friday morning. It locked up on friday afternoon and now all my recordings have disappeared. There were about 70. I watched one from about 4.00 until 5.00pm then deleted it (the rest of them were all there at the time) and put the machine in standby. At 7.00pm I went to watch another recording but there were only 2 listed which had been recorded between 5.00 and 7.00pm.
A quick glance at this thread suggests they are lost forever although they must still be there as there is only 10% free space on the disc.
Can anyone help?

ron I dont think there is any real practical way of doing this ourselves, especially if there is a lot of recordings. The only way we are going to be rid of this risk is when humax either find the cause and solution or are able to construct a tool as a workaround; presumably that maybe can use all the bits on disk to put togther an alternative recordings table from it.

I'm not re-formatting.
Response from humax below:

Hi

This is an alarming issue and has been reported by a number of users. I can confirm that our software developers are currently looking into this issue. It was reported to us some time ago but we could not reproduce the fault. Eventually a number of customers agreed to return their hard drives to us so we could investigate this matter. Our software developers are evaluating these hard drives now. We are awaiting feedback from them anytime with a resolution. This may come in the form of a recovery tool and software update. As soon as we have this information it will be released on our website and transmitted over the air. I would recommend waiting until we get information from our software developers. This should be within the next 2 weeks. Apologies for any inconvenience.

Regards

If Replying to this message please include all original and relevant correspondance.

Pat Arthurs
Customer Support
Humax Electronics Unit 1 Jubilee Rd
Newtownards. Co.Down N.Ireland BT23 4YH
UK Helpline Tel-0870-247-8800

In 2 weeks they may say its still not a go-er yet though. But if you have enough space to leave it for two weeks and wait and see then why not. Until then though if you decide not to format till then that is, you may get some funny things happening like new recordings appending to old bits still on the hard drive so you may get to a stage where you want to format it anyway just to get it straight.

In 2 weeks they will say wait another 2 weeks if they don't (not so) mysteriously become silent again. They've been fobbing us off for MONTHS with this same fiction.

Have Humax finally decided they're taking this seriously? They could have had drives to look at last Nov and didn't bother, they could have replied to my email in Dec 2005 and didn't bother, they could have passed the bug to an expert but didn't bother for 4 months. I'm far from convinced they're bothering now, so much easier to make empty promises to an audience that think nothing of a box that fails to achieve its most basic function so often.

thanks for your (as ever) helpful advice. I have got funny things going on and am very aware that it is a bit courupted. I will persevere for a little while longer!


(Why does Paul Shirley have to be SO negative - I love this piece of kit. It was my fault I hadn't backup up stuff I wanted to keep, if he doesn't like his box, take it back!!!!)

Please do continue to post marc!

I sent an email to Humax yesterday reporting my lost recordings but I haven't had any reply yet.

You probably never will judging by my experience. The first time I lost all the recordings (it has happened twice now) I ended up having to email Humax in Korea before I got a reply.

I concur with Paul Shirley's comments regarding the poor customer service being provided by Humax. They show no sign of taking this fundamental problem seriously or making any real effort to address it.

See post 210. I guess this is the latest info

What people need to realise is that software development takes TIME.

It is not a simple case of writing a "hello world" program.

Just diagnosign the cause of an intermittent fault (one that is rare, particularly if it only occours on few machines under specific circumstances (eg particular signal strength, or error rate, or sequence of remote presses or whatever) It can take a long time just to get to the point where you can reproduce the fault. Then you have to find out what is causing it, then you have to implement a fix, then you have to test it.

Just cos humax are not reporting every week the exact status, does not mean they are not treating it seriously.

The reason I'm accusing Humax of not taking this problem seriously is that they have not asked me (or others it appears) for details of what happened prior to the loss of the recordings, let alone asking to have the HD back for analysis. Without this information it is hard to see how they are going to make any progress finding a solution.

This maybe a comparatively rare problem at the moment, but sadly I suspect that over time many more users will fall victim to it.

...after 25 years doing it I was already rather aware of that. What I still need explaining is how they've made so little progress after 5 1/2 MONTHS. Their bumbling efforts just to keep a consistent name on recordings paint a sorry picture of their competence and how much effort is really being made.

Have you requested to have your 9200T replaced.

When people start asking for replacements they'll then take notice, although I think they are already well aware of the issue, because it will have an impact Humax.

Not returning your bad 9200T may send a message that you can live with the issue.

I agree. I did tell Humax the first time this happened that I would be returning it for a refund if it happened again. At the moment I'm awaiting a reply from Humax regarding the recovery tool. I doubt there is much point in getting a replacement, as I suspect that this problem is due to the software and that all 9200s have the potential to lose their recordings.

No ... don't wait for anything make them give you a new 9200T.

Very few have lost recordings ... you've got a box that losses recordings get another one and make the Humax accounts take notice ... DON'T site on your hands.

It is not a rare occurance. Several people here are reporting the same problem. Given this forum only represents a small percentage of users the problem is significant.

Actually it most likely means the opposite, because the forum represents mostly the people who have had this problem and looked here for a possible solution. There could be many many people out there who don't have any problems and so haven't even come here.

How significant?

Less or more than 5%?