Re: Humax 9200 losing recordings

[Max Demian]

"Chris Hogg" <m...@privacy.net> wrote in message
news:218hp8lnnmt9ns9ku...@4ax.com...
> Twice recently we've wanted to look at a recently recorded programme
> on the Humax (Menu>Record>Recorded programme), only to find the list
> completely empty, and all previously recorded programmes apparently
> lost or deleted. Is there a solution to this, like reformat or replace
> the HDD, or is it time to get a new box.

Reformat.

--
Max Demian

[Paul Ratcliffe]

On Sun, 19 May 2013 11:27:35 +0100, Chris Hogg <m...@privacy.net> wrote:

> Twice recently we've wanted to look at a recently recorded programme
> on the Humax (Menu>Record>Recorded programme), only to find the list
> completely empty, and all previously recorded programmes apparently
> lost or deleted. Is there a solution to this, like reformat or replace
> the HDD, or is it time to get a new box.

You can reformat but then you will never get lost programmes back.
If you are so inclined and feel you have enough knowledge/confidence,
you may be able to recover some if not all of the programmes. You need
to remove the disk, connect it to a Windows PC and run some software
called Humaxrw (but do not let Windows 'initialise' the disk or anything
else - it is not in a PC format).
I've had to do this on more than one occasion.

> If the latter, what? No satellite dish, so Freeview only. Whilest we
> do have a broadband connection, it's not very fast and anyway I can't
> see us using Internet facilities much, if at all. HD seems all the
> rage, but we don't have an HD TV (it's a old Panasonic CRT analogue
> set, with the Humax acting as a STB, via scart, giving very good
> picture quality, certainly as good as we need), so something that does
> the same as the Humax 9200 with a similar user interface would be
> favourite.

The HDR Fox T2 is a much better box than the 9200. With customised
firmware installed you get enhanced usability/management and tools for
fixing disk problems if/when they occur.

> but I'm not sure what the 'Fox' tag implies (as in HDR-Fox T2G, for example).

It doesn't mean anything. 9200 doesn't mean anything either. It's just a
tag Humax chose to use.

> I'm thinking that the 9300T might suit us best, but ISTR I've read
> some negative comments in the past about the user interface.

It's an old box and doesn't have a DVB-T2 tuner. At some point it is
probably inevitable that DVB-T services will all be replaced by T2.
You can probably work out now why a Fox T2 is so called.

[Paul Ratcliffe]

On Sun, 19 May 2013 17:59:06 +0100, Chris Hogg <m...@privacy.net> wrote:

> One more question: I was surprised that the reformat was more-or-less
> instant. I haven't formatted anything in decades, but when I did (3.5"
> floppies come to mind), it took quite a while. Why is the Humax
> different, or is it just that everything's different now and I'm
> terribly out of date / out of touch!

Reformat in this context is really "re-initialise filesystem".
There is relatively very little to do so it is quick.

What was happening with the floppies is that it was physically writing
to every track/sector on the disk (the so called low level format), and
then reinitialising the filesystem (high level format).

Modern hard disks don't need low level formatting. All the grubby
low level stuff of managing the recording medium is done by the disk's
firmware.

[Paul Ratcliffe]

On Sun, 19 May 2013 19:12:38 +0200, Martin <m...@address.invalid> wrote:

>>One more question: I was surprised that the reformat was more-or-less
>>instant. I haven't formatted anything in decades, but when I did (3.5"
>>floppies come to mind), it took quite a while. Why is the Humax
>>different, or is it just that everything's different now and I'm
>>terribly out of date / out of touch!
>

> It's using Linux not Windows.

By and large that is utter rubbish.

[Steve Thackery]

Chris Hogg wrote:

> One more question: I was surprised that the reformat was more-or-less
> instant.

It depends on the type of reformat. A low-level reformat involves
writing over the entire disk surface, and can take flippin' ages no
matter what OS you are using.

Nowadays reformatting means rewriting just the filing system data (the
stuff that makes the disk FAT32, NTFS, Ext3, etc). It only takes a few
seconds. In effect it makes the disk "look" like it's empty and new,
even though there's loads of old data (orphaned, no longer accessible
to the OS) on the disk.

--
SteveT

[Paul Ratcliffe]

> Humax do use Linux and not Windows.

Yes I know. Your comment seemed to imply that the cause of things
taking ages to format was down to Windows and that if you want a
quick format to use Linux.
This is not correct. There is no reason why one OS should be
significantly quicker at initialising a filesystem.

[Roderick Stewart]

On Mon, 20 May 2013 00:16:14 +0200, Martin <m...@address.invalid> wrote:

>>
>>Nowadays reformatting means rewriting just the filing system data (the
>>stuff that makes the disk FAT32, NTFS, Ext3, etc). It only takes a few
>>seconds. In effect it makes the disk "look" like it's empty and new,
>>even though there's loads of old data (orphaned, no longer accessible
>>to the OS) on the disk.
>

>which is how they catch celebs with disks full of kiddy porn that they
>thought they had erased.

And possibly how credit cards and bank accounts of perfectly innocent
people are compromised when the components of discarded PCs, including
the hard drives, end up in street markets in India.

The owners have nobody to blame but themselves of course, when you
consider how ubsurdly easy it is to take the necessary precautions.
All the information you need about how to wipe a disk securely is out
there for anyone to seek out and read, and software that will do the
job is available free.

Rod.

[Alan White]

On Mon, 20 May 2013 11:20:47 +0100, Roderick Stewart
<rj...@escapetime.myzen.co.uk> wrote:

>The owners have nobody to blame but themselves of course, when you
>consider how ubsurdly easy it is to take the necessary precautions.
>All the information you need about how to wipe a disk securely is out
>there for anyone to seek out and read, and software that will do the
>job is available free.

I use a big hammer.

--
Alan White
Mozilla Firefox and Forte Agent.
By Loch Long, twenty-eight miles NW of Glasgow, Scotland.
Webcam and weather:- http://windycroft.co.uk/weather

[Roderick Stewart]

On Mon, 20 May 2013 12:50:09 +0100, Alan
White<alan....@windycroft.co.uk> wrote:

>>The owners have nobody to blame but themselves of course, when you
>>consider how ubsurdly easy it is to take the necessary precautions.
>>All the information you need about how to wipe a disk securely is out
>>there for anyone to seek out and read, and software that will do the
>>job is available free.
>
>I use a big hammer.

That's how permanent data deletion is sometimes depicted in TV dramas,
but it seems a terrible shame to destroy something that's in perfect
working order and might otherwise have a bit of Ebay value.

Rod.

[Roderick Stewart]

On Mon, 20 May 2013 13:02:34 +0200, Martin <m...@address.invalid> wrote:

>>
>>The owners have nobody to blame but themselves of course, when you
>>consider how ubsurdly easy it is to take the necessary precautions.
>>All the information you need about how to wipe a disk securely is out
>>there for anyone to seek out and read, and software that will do the
>>job is available free.
>

>but for the majority it is beyond them.

It was beyond me too until I took the trouble to read about it. I know
there are people out there who have genuinely limited intellectual
ability, but it's difficult to believe there can be so many of them,
especially amongst the owners of computers. If you have a computer and
the ability to read, you effectively have the means to find out about
almost anything. There are limits of course, but for a mundane thing
like destroying the stored content of a redundant computer disk
without destroying the disk itself, not only is it easy to check if
you've got it right, but it doesn't really matter if you get it wrong,
and the software doesn't cost anything, so you've nothing to lose by
having a go.

Rod

[Johny B Good]

On Sun, 19 May 2013 19:12:38 +0200, Martin <m...@address.invalid> wrote:

>On Sun, 19 May 2013 17:59:06 +0100, Chris Hogg <m...@privacy.net> wrote:
>

====snip====

>>
>>One more question: I was surprised that the reformat was more-or-less
>>instant. I haven't formatted anything in decades, but when I did (3.5"
>>floppies come to mind), it took quite a while. Why is the Humax
>>different, or is it just that everything's different now and I'm
>>terribly out of date / out of touch!
>
>It's using Linux not Windows.

It's nothing to do with the OS and everything to do with the HDD (and
the choice of the 'quick' option for the format routine).

With floppies, the low level and the high level format are one and
the same (unless you choose the 'quick' option on a previously
formatted disk). HDDs, both ancient and current, have to be low level
formatted[1] before partitioning and high level formatting tasks can
be performed.

With almost any desktop OS, you will have the option to do a 'full'
high level format and a 'quick' high level format on any low level
formatted HDD. The humax might well be based on a *nix based OS but
obviously has no other formatting option than a 'quick' format option
(at least by default) in its options menu.

It might even be a case of a specially optimised AV FS format where
only a relatively tiny amount of the disk space used to store FS
metadata needs to be scanned for bad sectors whilst the bulk, used for
the video file data, can remain untested for bad sectors[2].

[1] The manufacturers have had to low level format the disk drives as
part of the manufacturing process since the advent of IDE. Apart from
the very early models of IDE drives, it hasn't been possible to truly
low level format a HDD.

[2] The odd bad sector or several hundreds in the data area (unless
concentrated in one largish group) is/are unlikely to render any such
afflicted recordings unwatchable.
--
Regards, J B Good