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Our FVP4000 has worked well for years, and was doing so last night. However, this morning all the recordings, hundreds of them, have gone, although all the scheduled recordings were still listed.
I checked on things like hard disk space and it said 100% available which was very worrying.
I tried unplugging the Humax and leaving it for 15 minutes several times, but always with exactly the same result …. no recordings and the schedule still present and correct.
I have just done a factory reset but without HDD reformat and its gone through the reset/retune process as expected. I now have no schedule, although I took photos of that, but, sadly, still absolutely no recordings.
It appears that my Humax has reformatted its HDD in the middle of the night with no user intervention. I see that I’m on a June 2020 firmware but I’m not sure when it updated. If it was last night, it was a lot more than a simple update!
Has anyone else been through this bitter disappointment? I’ve not reformatted the HDD yet but if all the recordings are really gone forever, I might as well reformat the drive.
I certainly did not expect this!
Richard
OK … I now have further details.
I’ve tried recording several programmes since I lost everything just to test the Humax, and all that happens is a recording is created with the title of the programme but none of the programme is actually recorded. It’s just a title with a recording length of zero.
This must be a total HDD failure.
I’ll have a look to see if I can replace the HDD with one I have lying around but it seems that a new recorder is going to be required.
I wonder if there is a current model which compares which my old MS Media Centre where you could just type “MotoGP”, say, into a box and the Media Centre would record every programme with “MotoGP” in the title or description. You did not have to find an actual programme to record so it was brilliant but I’ve never seen a black box recorded which can do that? Is there one?
Richard
RichardS-UK – 1 hour ago »
It appears that my Humax has reformatted its HDD in the middle of the night with no user intervention. I see that I’m on a June 2020 firmware but I’m not sure when it updated. If it was last night, it was a lot more than a simple update!
Has anyone else been through this bitter disappointment?
The software update was rolled out a couple of months ago and as far as we know only contained fixes designed to get the player apps working properly. I doubt the Humax has reformatted the drive; my guess is that there is some corruption in the file system; this is based on experience gathered from the HDR-FOX T2 with custom firmware. I would say your options are go ahead and format the hard drive or open the Humax and connect the hard drive to a PC and boot the PC with a live Linux CD (or USB memory stick). If you want to go down the latter route then you should consider opening an account at hummy.tv where the experts on file system repair can be found.
RichardS-UK – 10 mins ago »
This must be a total HDD failure.
It might be HDD failure but much more likely the filesystem has gone read only.
Thanks Martin
I tried the Humax “HDD Test” and “Format HDD” but everything fails.
I’ve now switched out the 1GB HDD for a SATA 1GB which I had left over from a PC build a few years ago. I’ve turned the box on and it’s now whirring away as if it’s formatting this old drive, although I haven’t asked it do to anything as nothing has, as yet, appeared on screen.
I’m assuming that the Humax is not looking for some boot software already installed on the HDD in a special partition or similar because it isn’t going to find it, of course.
I’ll leave it alone and see what happens in due course.
Richard
RichardS-UK – 14 mins ago »
Thanks Martin
I tried the Humax “HDD Test” and “Format HDD” but everything fails.
I’ve now switched out the 1GB HDD for a SATA 1GB which I had left over from a PC build a few years ago. I’ve turned the box on and it’s now whirring away as if it’s formatting this old drive, although I haven’t asked it do to anything as nothing has, as yet, appeared on screen.
I’m assuming that the Humax is not looking for some boot software already installed on the HDD in a special partition or similar because it isn’t going to find it, of course.
I’ll leave it alone and see what happens in due course.
Richard
There is no operating system software on the HDD. It’s stored in Non Volatile RAM (NVRAM) along with the recording schedule.
grahamlthompson – 18 mins ago »
RichardS-UK – 14 mins ago »
Thanks Martin
I tried the Humax “HDD Test” and “Format HDD” but everything fails.
I’ve now switched out the 1GB HDD for a SATA 1GB which I had left over from a PC build a few years ago. I’ve turned the box on and it’s now whirring away as if it’s formatting this old drive, although I haven’t asked it do to anything as nothing has, as yet, appeared on screen.
I’m assuming that the Humax is not looking for some boot software already installed on the HDD in a special partition or similar because it isn’t going to find it, of course.
I’ll leave it alone and see what happens in due course.
Richard
There is no operating system software on the HDD. It’s stored in Non Volatile RAM (NVRAM) along with the recording schedule.
So if I just wait long enough the new disk will eventually be initialised and the usual menus etc should appear on screen?
Richard
RichardS-UK – 32 mins ago »
I’m assuming that the Humax is not looking for some boot software already installed on the HDD in a special partition or similar because it isn’t going to find it, of course.
As Graham has said that is certainly wrong as there is no software on the hard drive. Try tuning the power to the Humax off and then on again; also check that the HDMI connection to the TV hasn’t come loose. I am not sure about the FVP boxes but most earlier Humax boxes ask the user whether to format the hard drive when they detect a new hard drive.
RichardS-UK – 48 secs ago »
grahamlthompson – 18 mins ago »
RichardS-UK – 14 mins ago »
Thanks Martin
I tried the Humax “HDD Test” and “Format HDD” but everything fails.
I’ve now switched out the 1GB HDD for a SATA 1GB which I had left over from a PC build a few years ago. I’ve turned the box on and it’s now whirring away as if it’s formatting this old drive, although I haven’t asked it do to anything as nothing has, as yet, appeared on screen.
I’m assuming that the Humax is not looking for some boot software already installed on the HDD in a special partition or similar because it isn’t going to find it, of course.
I’ll leave it alone and see what happens in due course.
Richard
There is no operating system software on the HDD. It’s stored in Non Volatile RAM (NVRAM) along with the recording schedule.
So if I just wait long enough the new disk will eventually be initialised and the usual menus etc should appear on screen?
Richard
Initialising a blank disk doesn’t take very long. setting up a new 2TB in my FVp-5000T took no longer than 15 mins, and the recording schedule was intact.
OK … the new disk seems to be initialised but it’s showing as 76% used and 24% available because it must have the OS and data from an old PC still on it.
Before formatting it, I decided to run the Humax HDD Test. It says “Processing … This may take a few minutes” with a spinning triangle but that’s been showing for 20 minutes already. How long does this test take to run?
Richard
RichardS-UK – 31 mins ago »
OK … the new disk seems to be initialised but it’s showing as 76% used and 24% available because it must have the OS and data from an old PC still on it.
I think it is very unlikely there will be any old data. What capacity is the hard drive? Some space is always reserved for the root user (10% ?) under Linux; also there will be separate partitions for the the timeslip buffer and the apps which will account for some of the missing space.
Before formatting it, I decided to run the Humax HDD Test. It says “Processing … This may take a few minutes” with a spinning triangle but that’s been showing for 20 minutes already. How long does this test take to run?
It took just over a minute on my 2TB drive.
Right …. I could not complete the HDD Test and neither could I reformat the replacement HDD. It just kept giving an error message that a recording was scheduled so the HDD could not be formatted, even though there was nothing scheduled and no recordings.
I decided to do another factory reset and format and that seemed to do the trick and I was then able to use the Format HDD option and it worked properly.
The new HDD now seems to be recording and playing programmes OK so hopefully I met get another year or two out of this box. I might have a look at the old HDD to see if I can recover anything but I suspect that it is completely defunct.
Many thanks for the help from those above.
Richard
RichardS-UK – 4 hours ago »
I might have a look at the old HDD to see if I can recover anything but I suspect that it is completely defunct.
I suggest you connect the old hard drive to a PC and run something like Crystal Diskinfo (free) to access the SMART data and post it here; then we can see if the hard drive is defunct or the file system damaged.
Just to add a twist to this thread, my Son came to lunch today and I told him about the problems I’d had with the Humax and said that, as it now appears to be working well again, I might replace this pre-used 1TB HDD with a new one and he suggested just putting in a 1TB SDD.
The connections are the same SATA ones and he is pretty sure that the Humax firmware will simply treat it the same as a conventional HDD. I can even buy a caddy to provide exactly the same physical fittings.
Has anyone done this before …. and did it work?
Richard
RichardS-UK – 2 mins ago »
The connections are the same SATA ones and he is pretty sure that the Humax firmware will simply treat it the same as a conventional HDD. I can even buy a caddy to provide exactly the same physical fittings.
Has anyone done this before …. and did it work?
It has been done before and it does work. An SSD will have a life that is limited by the amount of data written usually expressed as TBW (Terrabytes Written); you will need a reasonable quality SSD to get a 5 year life if you do a lot of recording. However the only advantage of an SSD in a PVR is the lack of noise. The conventional hard drives are fast enough to cope with recording two HD streams and playing a third with a fair bit of headroom to spare.
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