There could be trouble ahead.............

Any other questions about the software?

There could be trouble ahead.............

Postby walterwall » Wed Jun 23, 2010 11:51 pm

Hi PCBBC

Looking for a bit of advice please.

I used the superb sky copy+ software a couple of years ago when i first got my sky+hd box to upgrade it from the measly 160g that it came with to a 1tb Hitachi hardrive, and it has worked quite well to date barring the occasional crash that seems to with the territory and the ridiculously slow software and epg speed.

Tonight out of the blue i can't seem to access any of the recorded programs. If i go to planner i get the "header" and i suppose you'd call it the frame, but no programs showing at all? it's a bit like looking at the empty frame of a painting with a blank canvas in the middle.

Bit of a pain as i had almost 1tb of recordings on it.

And once i am at this screen it just hangs there and does nothing until i unplug the bloody box and then wait for it to reboot again. Which i'm sure you all know takes about 5 minutes for everything to come back to life again.

I've carried out a planner rebuild and it's still exactly the same.

Apart from that the box appears to be functioning normally, i can still watch, pause and play live tv.

I have not phoned sky yet but as the box is no longer under guarantee i suspect they may not be very helpful however i will call them tomorrow evening to see if they can suggest anything.

My questions are:

1) Does this sound like a hardrive problem/failure?

2) should i try to copy the contents of the drive to my PC and then back to the harddrive?

3) is it now possible to fit a 2tb hard drive using sky copy+ ? (just thinking ahead if i need to replace it)

Any advice info would be appreciated.

Cheers.
walterwall
Newbie
 
Posts: 14
Joined: Wed Jun 23, 2010 11:07 pm

Re: There could be trouble ahead.............

Postby pcbbc » Thu Jun 24, 2010 9:18 am

walterwall wrote:1) Does this sound like a hardrive problem/failure?
No - that would usually result in a specific fault message I would think.
This sounds more like the disk file system has got messed up, or one of your recordings is corrupt.

2) should i try to copy the contents of the drive to my PC and then back to the harddrive?
That's the first thing to try. It is also worth copying only a small selection of programmes to see if you can identify which one(s) are causing problems.
Do NOT run any Windows diagnostic tools on the disk (e.g. chkdsk) - None of these understand the XTVFS format and will just destroy Sky recordings.

3) is it now possible to fit a 2tb hard drive using sky copy+ ? (just thinking ahead if i need to replace it)
Only for Amstrad models as far as I am aware (baring any firmware updates that might have fixed it for other models I don't know about).
I would suggest, given the speed issues with the new EPG, drives over 1TB are not worth it unless one of the newer DRX890/5 Amstrad boxes specifically designed for them.
You can however buy a >1TB drive and limit the capacity using the drive manufacturers diagnostic tools to 1TB. This might be useful if you think you require extra capacity in the future, or want to use the drive elsewhere.

Any advice info would be appreciated.
Other than that it's down to you sending me an image of your disk for investigation.
User avatar
pcbbc
Site Admin
 
Posts: 1802
Joined: Wed Aug 22, 2007 2:08 am
Location: London, UK

Re: There could be trouble ahead.............

Postby walterwall » Thu Jun 24, 2010 10:26 am

Hi Pcbbc,

Many thanks for your invaluable advice it's much appreciated.

I spoke to sky today and they were as useless as ever and just suggested i to a full system reset which would erase all of my recordings and reformat the 1tb hardrive to who knows what???

Ok i'll take out the drive and copy most of the stuff i want to keep to my pc hardrive (luckily i have a 2tb capacity on it).

Questions:

1) Once i have copied the contents to the PC hardrive, what do i need to do to the 1tb hardrive that the original contents were copied from in order for me to prepare it so i can put the contents back on to it?

i.e. Do i need to initialise it , format it , remove portions? or do i just pop it in the caddy and start copying to it?

2) Do i need to set up a partition on said hardrive for the sky anytime recordings palava?

3) Once i select the hard drive for copying the programs back to do i select the drive size to the max 1tb or do i deduct 160gb for the sky anytime programs?


Thanks once again for all your help.
walterwall
Newbie
 
Posts: 14
Joined: Wed Jun 23, 2010 11:07 pm

Re: There could be trouble ahead.............

Postby pcbbc » Thu Jun 24, 2010 10:31 am

walterwall wrote:I spoke to sky today and they were as useless as ever and just suggested i to a full system reset which would erase all of my recordings and reformat the 1tb hardrive to who knows what???
492GB.

1) Once i have copied the contents to the PC hardrive, what do i need to do to the 1tb hardrive that the original contents were copied from in order for me to prepare it so i can put the contents back on to it?
Delete the partition off it with Windows Disk management.
Please make absolutely sure you have the correct drive selected before deleting anything!

2) Do i need to set up a partition on said hardrive for the sky anytime recordings palava?
No - the Anytime space is NOT a partition.

3) Once i select the hard drive for copying the programs back to do i select the drive size to the max 1tb or do i deduct 160gb for the sky anytime programs?
Please see the FAQ.

Thanks once again for all your help.
NP - Good luck with your backup/restore.
Let me know if this still doesn't work.
User avatar
pcbbc
Site Admin
 
Posts: 1802
Joined: Wed Aug 22, 2007 2:08 am
Location: London, UK

Re: There could be trouble ahead.............

Postby walterwall » Thu Jun 24, 2010 2:51 pm

Will do and report back.

By the way lunchtime today i decided to temporarily put the original 320g hardrive back in to the box so we can still do a bit of time shifting, however it now comes up with a new error message everytime i try to record a program.

The message states that there is an error and it is unable to record and i should contact sky on the following phone number. I did contact sky again and after they attempted to sell me an insurance policy they have now offered to send an engineer over on saturday morning to repair or replace the box free of charge. Now that's a turn up for the books i must say.

What i will do in the meantime is try to rescue my old recordings using my pc and copy plus and once the sky "engineer" has visited on saturday and after he has fixed/replaced the box i'll have another go at trying to re-install the 1tb hardrive.

I'll keep you posted.
walterwall
Newbie
 
Posts: 14
Joined: Wed Jun 23, 2010 11:07 pm

Re: There could be trouble ahead.............

Postby walterwall » Thu Jun 24, 2010 10:07 pm

Hi Pcbbc,

Update.

Well the copying to my pc is underway i ommitted the last 3-4 programs as it's one of those that i think may be corrupted but i'll have to wait and see.

clarification on one of your answers if i may please.

"Once i have copied the contents to the PC hardrive, what do i need to do to the 1tb hardrive that the original contents were copied from in order for me to prepare it so i can put the contents back on to it?"

"Delete the partition off it with Windows Disk management.
Please make absolutely sure you have the correct drive selected before deleting anything!"


I did not create a partition on the 1tb hardrive when i copied the programs over from my earlier sky+ box so is there definitily a partition there for me to delete?

Also, when i am ready to reconnect this 1tb hardrive for the files to be copied back to it is there really nothing more i have to do to it? my point is that it's not a "virgin" drive and will still have all the programs on it along with the corrupt file/files on it.

Do i not have to format it in some way to delete everything off of it before it's ready to be re-written to?

Thanks in advance. :D
walterwall
Newbie
 
Posts: 14
Joined: Wed Jun 23, 2010 11:07 pm

Re: There could be trouble ahead.............

Postby walterwall » Thu Jun 24, 2010 11:50 pm

Hi Again,

Just checked on the copying and it stopped at about 10% with the following error message.

"Can not determine endian format,or VC2 incorrect"

Don't know what that means so i clicked ok and it seems to be carrying on with the copying.

Does this suggest that the "corrupt" file is still present?

Do i carry on with it or shall i start again?

Please advise if you are able to.

Thanks.
walterwall
Newbie
 
Posts: 14
Joined: Wed Jun 23, 2010 11:07 pm

Re: There could be trouble ahead.............

Postby pcbbc » Fri Jun 25, 2010 10:17 am

walterwall wrote:I did not create a partition on the 1tb hardrive when i copied the programs over from my earlier sky+ box so is there definitely a partition there for me to delete?
Any disk that is formatted has a partition on it, it's a prerequisite - although maybe just one big partition which is the entire size of the drive.
Copy+ will have created this when you made the original copy to the disk as a destination.

Also, when i am ready to reconnect this 1tb hardrive for the files to be copied back to it is there really nothing more i have to do to it? my point is that it's not a "virgin" drive and will still have all the programs on it along with the corrupt file/files on it.
Not if you delete the partition.
Deleting the partition effectively deletes all of the contents of the disk permanently.

Do i not have to format it in some way to delete everything off of it before it's ready to be re-written to?
"Formatting" for modern hard drives is in may ways a misnomer. There are essentially two types of formatting, for want of better words "hard" and "soft".
"Hard" formatting involved laying down the individual tracks and sectors on the disk. This is like you do with floppies, but hasn't be possible for modern hard drives for many, many years. The hard format happens only once at the factory when the drive is manufactured.
"Soft" formatting involves creating the partition and writing the file system structures (be they FAT or NTFS etc) to and already "hard formatted" disk, which is what Copy+ and the Windows Format tool do. You don't need to do anything else, certainly not "format" the disk using a separate utility as all you will have to do is erase the partition this creates and start again - as Copy+ expects an unpartitioned drive as a destination.
User avatar
pcbbc
Site Admin
 
Posts: 1802
Joined: Wed Aug 22, 2007 2:08 am
Location: London, UK

Re: There could be trouble ahead.............

Postby pcbbc » Fri Jun 25, 2010 10:25 am

walterwall wrote:"Can not determine endian format,or VC2 incorrect"
There is a discrepancy between files on the disk and the File Allocation Table (FAT) for this particular recording. This discrepancy will have been corrected by Copy+ in the destination disk or image.
The destination will now at least be consistent, albeit the recording may not be playable in whole or part due to being corrupted by a bad FAT.

Usually this implies some kind of underlying file system corruption.

Does this suggest that the "corrupt" file is still present?
No - The underlying file system problem has been fixed on the destination.
However the recording may or may not be playable as a result.
User avatar
pcbbc
Site Admin
 
Posts: 1802
Joined: Wed Aug 22, 2007 2:08 am
Location: London, UK

Re: There could be trouble ahead.............

Postby walterwall » Fri Jun 25, 2010 8:19 pm

Many thanks pcbbc,

I completely understand now re the formatting etc. The drive has now been copied on to my PC and i'll delete the partition off the hardrive before copying the files back to it.

I'll carry on and report back on how it all goes.

Cheers.
walterwall
Newbie
 
Posts: 14
Joined: Wed Jun 23, 2010 11:07 pm

Re: There could be trouble ahead.............

Postby walterwall » Sun Jun 27, 2010 1:27 am

The writing back to the 1tb hardrive is now finished and it all appears to have gone well, i did not change the "endian" format and left it as big endian.

The problem with Sky however still continues. As i said in one of my previous postings when i took the 1tb drive out i provisionally put the original 320g drive back in but still could not record anything due to the following message that comes up whenever you try to record or access the planner.

SYSTEM FAULT 21-52R
Sky+ playback and recording are unavailable
Please call 08442 410800 for assistance
Press BACK UP to cancel


This is completely different from the original fault that i had with the 1tb drive that was just showing nothing recorded in the planner and just hanging.

Sky today sent some complete tosser (i know they like to refer to them as engineers but i can assure you they are not they are fitters at best so please forgive my French) who looked like he was recruited from the pages of this months most wanted criminal magazine. He was barely literate his English was shockingly poor and he was completely incompetent.

An example: He was messing around with the TV remote control because he was of the opinion the the small TV viewer screen that now appears in the rh corner of the sky TV guide menu was missing from my TV screen and was attempting to change the size/shape of the TV picture to bring the "missing mini TV" back in to the menu. He was quite taken aback when i pointed out to him that the mini TV screen can be turned on and off by the user. Unbelievable isn't it that Sky are using and sending people like this.

He was from some Sky partner company called AVC OR ABC i'm not sure exactly what their name was because his communication was so poor and he left no paperwork contact number, nothing at all in fact didn't even ask me for a signature.

But i digress, lets get back to the story.

He did not ask me what the problem was or bother to investigate anything at all he just went to the van and bought a new sky box (Amstrad one this time that looks the same but is smaller).

Plugged it all in and low and behold exactly the same message as above. He was keen to get away and said the message will go away during the next 24 hours but i'm convinced that's complete bollocks and indeed as i write this at 12.30 am on Sunday morning the message is still appearing.

During the day i spent quite a bit of time phoning Sky who would you believe had the cheek to tell me to speak to AVC/ABC or whatever they are called, i don't know why i should be doing that as my contract is with Sky not a third party who work for sky.

I explained that logic dictates that as it's exactly the same error message coming up on both boxes the fault lies elsewhere it can't be the box. You know call me Mr Thick and maybe i'm just clutching at straws here but do you (sky) perhaps need to send a signal of some sort that turns the sky plus feature on? have you downgraded my account in error so it's no longer a Sky + account? surely the error code 21-52R must mean something to someone in your technical dept?

Needless to say i got absolutely nowhere today and all the bullshit promises of getting a manager to call me back came to nothing (even getting cut off 3 times after waiting 10-15 minutes) so i'm now still waiting for a call back from someone, anyone!!

I heard every excuse under the sun today from AVC/ABC installer not answering his phone to his line manager missing in action (presumed dead). The Sky excuses were even better supervisors or managers unavailable (not willing to come to the phone more like) to the technical dept that deals with these issues being closed at the weekend.

Amazing i mean what would they do if the whole system went down at the weekend? sorry can't do anything as the technical dept is closed but i guess Sky are no different to any other massive faceless companies that seem to run our lives these days. The days of actually getting hold of a real person of substance to deal with your problems or issues i'm afraid are long gone. Welcome to the nightmare bureaucracy that modern Britain has become.

But anyway back to the 1tb hardrive. I'm afraid i can't report on if it was a success or not till i get a working sky plus hd box to test it in. If or when i finally have a functioning box i'll let you all know.

Sorry about the long rant but i've been pretty frustrated with it all today and i just hope that the hard drive will still be compatible in a new box.


That's all for now folks..
walterwall
Newbie
 
Posts: 14
Joined: Wed Jun 23, 2010 11:07 pm

Re: There could be trouble ahead.............

Postby pcbbc » Sun Jun 27, 2010 9:15 am

You are quite correct that if you are still getting the "SYSTEM FAULT 21-52R" message with the replacement box, be that with the 1TB drive or the supplied drive after doing a Full System Reset on it, that the fault must almost certainly lies elsewhere.
However I am completely in the dark as to what this error means - sorry.

Are you able to view all your channels, including subscription ones?
Might also be worth checking the "default transponder" in the hidden installer menus. I believe this is meant to be set to 11.778 V?

Hopefully, if you can eventually get to talk to someone who knows what they are talking about at sky, then once this problem is resolved your 1TB drive will be accessible again. My only advice is to stick at it, it IS possible to get escalated (or at least it was) to their second line support - but only once you've been through the call centre monkeys first I'm afraid. I know it is annoying, but it's just not cost effective for large organisations to employ people who know everything when the vast majority of faults are people with the batteries in their remote round the wrong way or who simply haven't tried turning off and back on again. But I agree it would just be nice if the front line staff could recognise if it was a problem they can't solve and had someone available 24x7 who did know the answer.

Anyway, Good Luck!
User avatar
pcbbc
Site Admin
 
Posts: 1802
Joined: Wed Aug 22, 2007 2:08 am
Location: London, UK

Re: There could be trouble ahead.............

Postby Pops » Sun Jun 27, 2010 10:10 am

walterwall & pcbbc....

I just did a quick search on SYSTEM FAULT 21-52R and found this post over at skyuser:

http://www.skyuser.co.uk/forum/sky-hd-s ... 1-52r.html

It seems the hard drive was the problem. Dunno, probably worth a try though.

Cheers...
Pops
Newbie
 
Posts: 3
Joined: Sat Jun 26, 2010 11:23 am

Re: There could be trouble ahead.............

Postby walterwall » Sun Jun 27, 2010 1:13 pm

Thank's for the info Pop's that is very interesting indeed, i suppose it is possible that they have given me a refurbished box that also has a faulty drive.

I'll see if i get a call from some one at Sky by tomorrow evening if not i may try fitting the 1tb drive in the box temporarily to see if it works.

I'll report back as soon as possible.

Cheers.
walterwall
Newbie
 
Posts: 14
Joined: Wed Jun 23, 2010 11:07 pm

Re: There could be trouble ahead.............

Postby walterwall » Tue Jun 29, 2010 1:18 am

Hi Pcbbc,

Good news and bad news i'm afraid.

First the good: Sky have replaced the box with another DRX890-C and the fault has now gone i can now record and playback fine. Looks like the second box was indeed a refurbished one.

Bad news:

I tried to fit the 1tb Hitachi drive that has all my recording on it tonight and unfortunately every time i try to access the planner it goes in to standby doh!!

I tried the following with mixed results.

Planner rebuild did absolutely nothing.

So i thought as i still have the copy of the files on my PC i'll do a full system reset on the 1tb drive in the machine, which i did and it appeared to then function normally. I then tested it by doing a few test recordings and for some bizarre reason it wont record any of the hd channels??

I tried three times to play back a HD recording and each time it said recording interrupted then a few seconds later it said press back up to return which then took me back to the planner. Very odd indeed but at least it's not locking up and forcing me to unplug it.

As i wasn't getting any further with it i've put the original drive back in for the moment (i've left it all loose and uncased so i can still play around with it if need be) and that appears to work absolutely fine with HD recordings and standard def recordings at the same time.

So any suggestions on how or if i can still get my old recordings that are now on the pc hardrive back into the box?

Could the 1tb Hitachi drive be the culprit or do you still think it may be corruption somewhere in the recordings? Is it worth me buying a new 1tb hardrive and having another go at copying the recordings across?

Can anyone suggest a suitable 1tb hardrive for this sky box?

Any info or help would be appreciated.

Cheers.
walterwall
Newbie
 
Posts: 14
Joined: Wed Jun 23, 2010 11:07 pm

Next

Return to Copy+ General Support

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 22 guests

cron