HDD failing - cause for glitching?

[RangerBob]

Hello All,

Need a bit of advice,

I have been having problems recently with glitching, in both liveTV and Recordings, on an MVP and in-situ on my system.

I have been putting this down to the really heavy rain that we've been having lately, knowing DVB-T's low tollerance for atmospherics. It has been getting steadily worse for a while now, and is now all but unwatchable.

However, I am now beginning to suspect my Harddisk may be the cause of the problems. When I installed a new disk a couple of months ago, it was showing a long spin up time, and a few other minor error counts. I contacted the retailer, and was told this was normal for this make of drive and would settle down as the drive aged.

I ran HDD health today, and was greeted with the following results:

Parameters info for MAXTOR STM3160212A
Date: 26/06/2007 Time: 19:00:16

Serial number: xxxxxxxxx
Firmware rev: 3.AAJ
Capacity: 134.22 GB
Ultra DMA: Mode 5
S.M.A.R.T.: Enabled


S.M.A.R.T. attribute Value Threshold Worst

Raw Read Error Rate 104 6 85
Spin Up Time 94 0 94
Start/Stop Count 100 20 100
Reallocated Sector Count 100 36 100
Seek Error Rate 74 30 60
Power On Hours Count 99 0 99
Spin Retry Count 100 97 100
Power Cycle Count 100 20 100
(Unknown attribute) 100 0 100
(Unknown attribute) 100 0 100
(Unknown attribute) 50 45 45
Temperature 50 0 55
Hardware ECC recovered 47 0 46
Current Pending Sector Coun 100 0 100
Off-line Scan Uncorrectable 100 0 100
Ultra ATA CRC Error Count 200 0 200
Write Error Rate 100 0 253
TA Counter Increased 100 0 253

These don't look good to me, but my previous experience has made me doubt myself in reading these! I am pretty sure this is bad, but just to be sure, can anyone advise whether this might be normal behaviour?

[prouton]

I contacted the retailer, and was told this was normal for this make of drive and would settle down as the drive aged.

Dude, you were lied to. Harddrives are designed to work correctly from day one -- the only way to go from there is downhill.

Download and run the diagnostics from Maxtor (Seagate) and see what they say. What's the warranty status on the drive?

[zehd]

The SMART stats are based on before and after values. For example:

If a drive recorded 100 C temperature (for whatever reason), and it was currently running at 50 C, then SMART would say that the temperature was great or excellent, even though it might be 10 degrees hotter than the manufs stated values...

Another example is if a drive had several sectors marked as bad, and then using a disk utility, you were able to recover some of the sectors SMART would say, hmmmm, had 100 bad sectors, now have 75 bad sectors.... Your drive is running great! This is misleading, because it makes you over look that you still have 75 bad sectors AND the number is changing (which is bad...)


BUT I would say that no new drive should give you a 'worst' rating. I wouldn't trust the drive.

However I'm not quite sure if a failing drive is responsible for the poor recordings. Hard to say

[flyswatta]

I was getting some "speed ups" on my recordings and the culprit was a bad "new" Seagate drive (about 1 month old) The big tipoff that the drive was bad was when I heard a "metal scraping" sound emenating from the server :eek: .

It then failed their diagnostic. Their website said something about sending the new drive and I could mail them the bad one back, but when I went to select the option, it wasn't there. I called them and they seemed miffed that I called instead of using the website but they said that they don't send one first then have you send it back.

I sent them the drive and they replaced it ( with a refurb :mad: ) but it's been working fine for 4 months now.

So yeh, it's possible that a new drive is the culprit, at least it was in my case.

[stustunz]

what plugins do you have running?
check your arial maybe it is a loose conection or water is getting in?

[RangerBob]

I did have the weather plugin (ironic-no?) enabled, but disabled that a while back to eliminate it. No other plugins are enabled.

My antenna is an internal loft yagi. Not the best location but I have no alternative. Makes it a bit sensitive to rain on the tiles, but previously nothing too bad, I am 10 miles from Sandy Heath Transmitter. I have checked the antenna orientation and looks ok to me, nothing has moved, and I have removed my distribution amp and run directly to the card (just to check).

I have been running the Seatools diagnostic app suggested by prouton, and the drive keeps coming back ok. Could be that the SMART settings are a red herring. I'll keep looking at it and get back with any further results.

Thanks

[prouton]

I guess the next thing to check is the fragmentation level of the harddrive containing your recordings. If this system is used for anything other than pvr duties, then run your favorite anti-spyware software just to rule that possibility out.

[stustunz]

digital tuners i thought digital was going to be more reliable
at least with analog you just get a bad picture easy to work out whats wrong
digital it could be so many different things it seems pain in butt
although when it is going its bloody good picture

[pBS]

i've had SMART itself [or their implementation] cause glitches like that on some drives, can't remember the brand tho..
it may be falsely error-ing out and working too hard at relocation..
SMART has never known to be really useful anyways..
[by the time it tells you anything definite, you already know..lol]
just a thought..

oh and just disabling the weather plugin won't stop it loading, you have to remove the .dll from plugins..

[stustunz]

good advice pbs
yeah and any other crap you might have tried could be hanging around
save your gbpvr folder (all of it)
then reload with fresh one
thats what i did and the gliches are alot better

how much spare space do you have on your system hard drive