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Try disconnecting the hard drive – does it boot ok now. (Case screws are hidden in feet). If so, I would suggest deleting the partitions on a PC and reinstalling it.
REPASSAC – 11 hours ago »
Try disconnecting the hard drive – does it boot ok now. (Case screws are hidden in feet). If so, I would suggest deleting the partitions on a PC and reinstalling it.
Thanks for your reply REPASSAC, they sound like good suggestions. Before I go ahead and break the warranty seal though, do you think it’s worth me contacting Humax? Yes, the one year Grade A warranty has passed but I think it’s still very arguable whether a Satellite PVR was of ‘merchantable quality’ if it became completely unusable after 14 months. (Ref. Sale of Goods Act)
Actually I see there is a discussion along those lines here…
http://forums.digitalspy.co.uk/showthread.php?t=1831300
Has anyone else here had similar dealings with Humax outside the warranty period?
it’s always worth giving Humax a call on Monday, they’ll either say yes or no.
I don’t have one of these, but I thought the partitions were encrypted LUKS. My guess is they don’t keep multiple keys, a sensible solution would be in at least two places on the disk and in nvram.
If the disk is clattering then it’s likely to have failed and I’d be trying humax to see if they’re feeling generous.
If Humax can’t help then I’d be inclined to remove the drive as Repassac suggested, but have a good look first, see if there’s a partition table, take a disk copy of all partitions, if there are three partitions, delete the smallest partition and put back in the humax to test, if it doesn’t help, restore the partition and delete the next smallest and test, if that doesn’t work wipe the disk check it works and initialises, restore the largest partition which I’m assuming would have the media on it.
In fact there’s so much I’d want to be doing with it, assuming it’s a 500GB put another 500GB in and see what happens – either the box is faulty or not, if the partition table is missing from the original disk simply copy/recreate it over from the data as shown on the replacement and test, same for 1TB. smart will also give you an indication as to what’s going on.
As a linux systems engineer I’m surprised you’ve got the warranty seal still intact. I’d be itching to take a closer look. Take everything I’ve posted with a pinch of salt as I don’t own a hdr1000s, I’d be surprised though if wiping the disk doesn’t help, I think putting in a spare 500GB first would prove whether the problem is with the box or disk. Which route you go down is a personal choice, let us know how you get on.
Hi damian. Yes I’d be curious but there just aren’t enough hours in the day! To be honest I tend to take an ‘if it aint broke, don’t fix it’ approach, especially if it’s still in warranty, which it was until fairly recently. I bought to box to do a job and it did it just about fine.
I tend to agree, it’s worth a call to Humax tomorrow and see what they say. At only 14 months old I think I have a good case, but if they won’t play ball and I’ve got nothing to lose, I’ll certainly get stuck in and get my hands dirty, so to speak.
Thanks for the input guys. Next step, call Humax and take it from there.
The box negotiates with your TV to determine the best HDMI speed.
Can be 720p, 1080i, 1080P or whatever.
Make sure that you have not set your HDMI in the box to be a greater speed than your TV can cope with.
The default file you tried was for earlier firmware versions, and your unit did not apparently reset using this.
Check your PM’s (private messages top right of forum) I have sent you a link to latest default file.
Thanks Barry, much appreciated. Just tried that, appeared to load successfully (both progress bars to 100% and got the message saying press standby button to restart) but unfortunately the same result.
Ozzy, neither the TV nor the HDMI cable has changed and I did try starting the box without the HDMI cable plugged in (in fact, without anything connected other than its power supply). Ironically, the first time I did that, it did appear to start up, although the only way I could tell was that it displayed a channel name on its built in display. However, rather than connect the HDMI cable I powered it off and reconnected the HDMI before trying again, only for the constant restarting to reappear. Since then I have tried again numerous times with the HDMI cable disconnected but it’s still doing the constant restarting – it has never displayed a channel again.
Pity I was hoping that would work.
Call Humax support to log the issue, not sure you will get any joy exchanging the unit but worth a try.
Thanks Barry. I’ve spoken to Humax on the phone. Initially they asked me to switch it off for ten minutes but when I explained I had already tried that, they said they would email me some instructions to try. However, I have since received the instructions and they were to perform a factory reset, which of course I can’t do because the box never boots up anywhere near that point that I could access the menus to do that. I’ve emailed them back so we’ll see what happens next.
Update: Humax were happy to talk on the phone and provide a couple of suggestions, albeit the first being inappropriate (perform factory reset, which was not possible because the box will not start up) and the second making no difference (perform ‘software’ update using USB stick and file they supplied). They are sticking to their guns about this Grade A unit now being out of warranty and hence they are ‘unable’ (or unwilling) to repair or replace it free of charge. I maintain that it very arguably is not and was not of merchantable quality if it failed and became completely unusable after less than 15 months, but it could take a while to go through that debate so in the meantime I am going to photograph my intact warranty seal (so that I can demonstrate that I’ve not tampered with the box before now, in case that’s any use) and then try disconnecting the hard drive as previously mentioned, to see how the box behaves then.
Folks, if I was to buy or borrow a replacement hard drive, what specs do I need to comply with? What can I use and what can’t I use? I believe it would need to be a SATA drive. What is the largest size that this unit can take? I know some people have used a 2TB drive successfully (and indeed this box can be bought brand new with a 2TB drive) but although some Googling and searching has revealed talk of people trying 3TB drives, I’ve not found any reports of anyone having success with 3TB internal.
You ideally need a drive specified for consumer electronics (CE) rather than a PC specced drive. A drive specified for PC data storage will work, but over a long period data integrity checks will create glitches in recording a continuous data stream.
PVR’s impose different performance requirements to those specified for use in PC’s as data storage media.
http://www.wdc.com/wdproducts/library/SpecSheet/ENG/2879-701250.pdf
I have had a WD AV-GP 2TB drive self installed from launch of the box. So far no problems.
Thanks Graham, much appreciated.
Another update…
– Disconnected hard drive and powered box on. Result: box got beyond the STARTING/freesat/Humax displays and to the on-screen installation wizard.
– Powered off, reconnected hard drive and powered on. Result: same fault as earlier, i.e. STARTING/freesat/Humax displays, restarts itself, STARTING/freesat/Humax displays, restarts itself, etc, etc, continually.
Conclusion: hard drive kaput. Will hang on for any other tips on selecting a replacement hard drive, but having had a quick look at prices I think I might as well go for a 2TB. (Unless anyone has got a 3TB or larger working..?)
you haven’t said whether you have a 500GB or 1TB model.
what does SMART tell you, also can you read the partition table?
you’ll probably find the drive isn’t kaputt, just some of the data on it is corrupted
The quality of hard drives isn’t what it used to be as costs have come down. A fair amount of drives out there only have one years warranty, 90 days in the usa, it’s just unfortunate that we don’t have a standard 2 years as in many EU countries.
Any 500GB or larger sata will be fine for testing. I’ve not heard of anybody using smaller, but I’d be surprised if 250GB, 320GB etc. wouldn’t work just in case you have some of these knocking around.
Any slower speed low power 5900rpm or lower, intelli-power, green etc. sata will be fine for continuous use.
As far as I know you’re not going to get any >2TB to work or at most only get 2TB available as the kernel’s likely to have a 32bit limitation.
It’d be worthwhile testing the box with an old drive first to make sure power supply and controller are in order before purchasing a new 2TB drive. Alternatively, as Repassac suggested and if you don’t want to play with the drive and SMART isn’t showing any problems then wiping the original drive is likely to work.
Sorry, I thought I had said in my original post that it’s a 1TB model but I see now that I didn’t.
Agreed, makes sense to try the unit with another suitable drive before shelling out for a new one. I’ll ask around in the office when I’m next in there.
I’ve not looked at the partition table or SMART statistics yet as I only have laptops at home and I don’t have the necessary cables or adapters to hook this drive up to them. Again, I’ll ask around in the office to see what I can borrow (maybe even a desktop computer to pop it in) or if necessary, buy what I need.
One thing I’ll be interested to try (if the disk is readable) is to copy all the data off the disk (using dd for example; if I have somewhere big enough to copy it to that is) then wipe the disk, copy it all back and see what happens. If necessary, I can also try deleting/restoring specific partitions as previously suggested.
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