HDD troubles

[aix]

Having problems with my new VU+ Duo.

I've installed a hard drive, formatted it, recorded a couple of programmes. Then all of a sudden the box wouldn't see the drive (the device wouldn't appear in /dev, so it's not just a mounting issue.) Opened the box, fiddled with the SATA and power cables, powered up, and all is good again. Then, a day later, the drive is gone again.

Has anyone here experienced or heard of similar issues, or has any suggestions?

1. I have to say the SATA connector on the motherboard feels very cheap.
2. The drive is a 1TB WD drive in which I have pretty high confidence (been repurposed from a working setup.)

[pooface]

First off. Welcome to the forums. Don't be afraid to post a welcome message in this thread:


http://www.vuplus-support.co.uk/forumdisplay.php?13-Introduction

Secondly, Western Digital drives are known to be fiddly with these boxes. Have a look through this thread for information on working brands of hdd's:


http://www.vuplus-support.co.uk/showthread.php?860-Please-post-your-working-brand-of-internal-SATA-HDD-and-size

[aix]

Thanks for the welcome & the pointers.

From looking at the list of "known good" drives, it would appear the WD is actually the most popular brand (with Samsung a very close second.)

Not having a spare drive to hand, I've replaced the SATA cable (which to be honest looked a bit suspect). It works now. If this doesn't fix the problem for good, I'll try a different drive.

P.S. The problem reported in the other thread sounds quite different to mine, so I think they're unrelated.

[pooface]

Sounds all good then... Hopefully all sorted.

Had similar problems with an e-sata drive that wouldn't work very well, similar sort of problems. Replacing the cable sorted it... Should've thought about this, but just assumed that because of the problems I'd heard with WD drives, thought that would likely be the prob.

Keep an eye on it, and keep us informed as to whether it's sorted :)

[aix]

It worked fine for a few days with the new SATA cable. I had to reboot the box earlier today, and the drive has disappeared again. :-(

What a pain.

Will try a different drive to see if it makes a difference.

[aix]

Having been observing the box for a little while, I have a slightly better understanding of what's going on.

When the box is booting up, there is about a 50% chance that it fails to detect the hard drive. There are no errors in /var/log/messages, but there is also no mention of /dev/sda where the system would autodetect drives/partitions.

In the other 50% of cases, everything's good. The drive works fine until the next reboot, when there's a 50% chance it disappears.

When the drive does disappear and then comes back after a further reboot, there are no problems with the contents. All the programs are preserved, there are no problems with the filesystem or any other anomalies I was able to spot.

Does anyone have any suggestions as far as diagnosing this further? I am very comfortable administering Linux boxen, so be as technical as you like.

Thanks.

[aix]

P. S. I am yet to try a non-WD drive. This is the next thing on my list (should be able to do this tonight.) Any other suggestions are still welcome.

[pooface]

P. S. I am yet to try a non-WD drive. This is the next thing on my list (should be able to do this tonight.) Any other suggestions are still welcome.

Did you manage to try a non-WD hdd yet? How was that? Did it all go ok with the different drive?

[aix]

Installed a Samsung drive the other day and am yet to encounted any problems (but haven't really used the box since then and only rebooted it a couple of times.)

For the record, the problematic WD drive was WD10EADS. Some people have reported that forcing the drive into SATA I mode (with the OPT1 jumper) helps. I have not tried this myself.

[pooface]

Hopefully will all work fine now then :) Let us know in a week's time if all working well then :)

Seems weird that some drives just don't work with the box though?! You'd have thought that they would all just work, end of. Wonder if it could be a driver issue of some kind?!

[aix]

Wonder if it could be a driver issue of some kind?!
It's hard to be sure, but from what I've seen it may well be a driver issue, but may equally well be something else.

What's clear is that it's not an issue with my box (other drives seem to work fine) nor with my drive (the same drive has been working for a long time in a different box.) Rather, it's a compatibility issue between the two, especially since other people trying to use the same WD model in their VU+ boxes have experienced exactly the same problem.

[pooface]

Weird indeed. Wonder if anyone has ever queried alex at vuplus?! But then again, everytime I email him, I never get a reply, and never see anything being fixed (bugs still apparant in the software, and quite simple to fix. a "we are looking at it" post would be nice ;))