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help? same DVR has corrupted *another* EHD

So before I could even try to follow DavidLevin's helpful advice, the same secondary DVR has corrupted yet another EHD I ended up buying another 1.5TB after that first one went bad in April, so that I could use it to transfer off the bad EHD's data, but since I never got to do that back then, I started using it as another EHD for archiving. Tonight, I was trying to find a file on the April EHD to restore, and the screen froze up. It didn't reboot, even after more than 10 minutes, so I (probably stupidly) did a front-panel reset and disconnected the EHD during the DVR reboot. After the DVR was fully rebooted, I reconnected the EHD and as soon as I tried to view the contents, the DVR rebooted. This EHD is also rebooting my primary DVR when I tested it on that one too.

Am I pulling at threads to think my secondary DVR could be causing the corruption since both started acting up while attached to my secondary DVR? How would I even explain this to Dish Tech Support in an attempt to try to get a replacement 722?

And is there any way to figure out which file or folder "holds" the corruption so that I can delete it via Ubuntu before copying files off to another EHD?

2 DVR's?

jd613 said:

So before I could even try to follow DavidLevin's helpful advice, the same secondary DVR has corrupted yet another EHD I ended up buying another 1.5TB after that first one went bad in April, so that I could use it to transfer off the bad EHD's data, but since I never got to do that back then, I started using it as another EHD for archiving. Tonight, I was trying to find a file on the April EHD to restore, and the screen froze up. It didn't reboot, even after more than 10 minutes, so I (probably stupidly) did a front-panel reset and disconnected the EHD during the DVR reboot. After the DVR was fully rebooted, I reconnected the EHD and as soon as I tried to view the contents, the DVR rebooted. This EHD is also rebooting my primary DVR when I tested it on that one too.

Am I pulling at threads to think my secondary DVR could be causing the corruption since both started acting up while attached to my secondary DVR? How would I even explain this to Dish Tech Support in an attempt to try to get a replacement 722?

And is there any way to figure out which file or folder "holds" the corruption so that I can delete it via Ubuntu before copying files off to another EHD?

Click to expand...

If you have 2 DVR's what do the ext HDD's do on the primary DVR?

whatchel1 said:

If you have 2 DVR's what do the ext HDD's do on the primary DVR?

Click to expand...

The two EHD's in question *first* caused reboots on my secondary DVR, and they unfortunately both cause my primary DVR to reboot too...and I use primary/secondary as the same identifiers that Dish uses on my account.

Problem

jd613 said:

The two EHD's in question *first* caused reboots on my secondary DVR, and they unfortunately both cause my primary DVR to reboot too...and I use primary/secondary as the same identifiers that Dish uses on my account.

Click to expand...

If it does it to both of your units then it sounds like that is a compatibility problem w/ those units and E*. Maybe a dumb question but you are using a separate power supply for these HDD's?

whatchel1 said:

If it does it to both of your units then it sounds like that is a compatibility problem w/ those units and E*. Maybe a dumb question but you are using a separate power supply for these HDD's?

Click to expand...

All of my EHDs are WD that many here recommend: three of the 1.5TB newer WD Essential drives and two older 1 TB MyBook--the kind that Essentials replaced late last year. So far the newest two of the 1.5TB WD Essentials are the ones that have "gone bad."

Not a dumb question -- first thing I tried was switching power supplies and USB cords when this started. Since then I've tried switching out power supplies among the three different 1.5TB WD Essential EHDs, but it doesn't make any difference, as the reboots will happen with drives 2 and 3 with any of the three power cords. When this started, I had two 1.5TB WD drives, and so far the first one I bought is still working, but then again, I haven't hooked that first one up to the secondary DVR in a while...

It could be possible that a weak power supply is causing the corruption, but once the drive is corrupted switching out power bricks isn't going to help.

The link I posted covers how to "find" the scan disk program (you actually run it from the command line and yes e2fsck is part of the standard installation).

If there is a corrupted event/folder, is can be difficult to find.... That's why I mentioned it can take some trial n error when copying programs.

Then scan disk will sometimes move corrupted files to the "lost and found" folder. The 622/722 will ignore files in this folder (this is a good thing).

I'd probably stay away from the drive type that has given you two corruptions. Though I'm a little surprised. For me, I've found the 622 to be pickier then the 722. I have one series of drives that are fine on the 722 but don't get along with the 622.

A couple more notes on e2fsck. By default, it runs in a mode where it asks you to accept each correction. In some cases you could end up sitting there hitting "y" 100's of times (remapping lost clusters). You can hit cntrl-C (abort), then use the option to assume the "y" response....

type:
e2fsck -help
to see all the switches.

Also, even if you're still truly bent on trying to copy the files, I think you should run the e2fsck first.

Oh yea, and after you run e2fsck and it corrects the errors, I'd suggest you run it again to see it declare the drive error free.

still having problems...

David_Levin said:

It could be possible that a weak power supply is causing the corruption, but once the drive is corrupted switching out power bricks isn't going to help.

The link I posted covers how to "find" the scan disk program (you actually run it from the command line and yes e2fsck is part of the standard installation).

If there is a corrupted event/folder, is can be difficult to find.... That's why I mentioned it can take some trial n error when copying programs.

Then scan disk will sometimes move corrupted files to the "lost and found" folder. The 622/722 will ignore files in this folder (this is a good thing).

I'd probably stay away from the drive type that has given you two corruptions. Though I'm a little surprised. For me, I've found the 622 to be pickier then the 722. I have one series of drives that are fine on the 722 but don't get along with the 622.

A couple more notes on e2fsck. By default, it runs in a mode where it asks you to accept each correction. In some cases you could end up sitting there hitting "y" 100's of times (remapping lost clusters). You can hit cntrl-C (abort), then use the option to assume the "y" response....

type:
e2fsck -help
to see all the switches.

Also, even if you're still truly bent on trying to copy the files, I think you should run the e2fsck first.

Oh yea, and after you run e2fsck and it corrects the errors, I'd suggest you run it again to see it declare the drive error free.

Click to expand...

I got a new EHD (and new power supply) and was finally able to successfully get Ubuntu running. After more than a bit of trial and error with permissions on the EHD, I was able to start copying some files to test out moving them to this new EHD that had up until today been working just fine with my primary dvr. Admittedly, I didn't run fsck beforehand b/c I just can't figure out how to get it to work.

So I went ahead and moved a small set of folders, and then moved the EHD back to my DVR. I can't remember if I unmounted or just unplugged the USB, but almost immediately after I connected the EHD back to my DVR, the DVR rebooted. It didn't even need me to try to access the EHD, and the reboot was back-to-back-to-back-to-back, with the system not even completely coming back up before rebooting again, at which point I pulled out the USB and then the DVR stopped rebooting and now seems fine.

I reconnected the EHD to Ubuntu to see if I could find any corruption in the new files, but when running fsck, I'm getting this error pasted in at the end of this post... I really am at the end of the little that I know about Ubuntu, so if anyone can help, please put it into "dummies" terms, as that is how I feel now

What do I try next? I'm now down **three** EHDs, as I had planned to use this third one to facilitate an exchange via either WD or the store. This latest EHD is less than 30 days old, the second one is barely 90 days old, and the oldest one is less than a year old. I really don't want to lose all of these archives, as I never had a chance to watch much of this other than some movies that I did watch but wanted to keep...

Oh, and all lost and found folders are empty.

fsck results even after changing to Root and setting permissions and unmounting:
root@ubuntu:~# sudo chown -R jd:jd /media/disk
root@ubuntu:~# fsck /dev/disk

fsck 1.41.4 (27-Jan-2009)
e2fsck 1.41.4 (27-Jan-2009)
fsck.ext2: Is a directory while trying to open /dev/disk

The superblock could not be read or does not describe a correct ext2
filesystem. If the device is valid and it really contains an ext2
filesystem (and not swap or ufs or something else), then the superblock
is corrupt, and you might try running e2fsck with an alternate superblock:
e2fsck -b 8193 <device>