warranty (non) repairs

bpratt · Post by **bpratt** » Thu Apr 11, 2013 21:22

Bought myself another DPP2 back in February, and didn't get to install it until until the start of March, only for it to lock up continuously with error 0000, and the inherant HD check when it was started back up again.

Thought no worries, I'll get it sorted out under warranty, and proceeded to contact Icetv who I bought it through, who said they'd arrange to ship out a replacement. Although later than day they contacted me to give digital trading a call and speak to them, which I did.

They arranged to email me a e-parcel voucher, and I boxed up my P2 and sent it down on March 8th, which was received down there on the 13th March according to the tracking.at auspost.

I thought I'd give them a fair go, and didn't call them back until a few days after it was received and they said they still send me a new replacement.

Over the next few weeks I phoned several times to find out what was taking so long with the replacement, and kept on getting promises it would be shipped the next day.

Eventually it was shipped out on the 5th of April, and was received back here today the 11th of April.

Didn't get a chance to unwrap it and plug it all back in until tonight, only to find it is the same P2 I sent back down, except it came back in a P2 2TB box, no big drama, thought they might have sent up a 2TB to apologise for the delays.

Plugged it all back in and voila, the exact same problems are happening again. It's my same P2 as it still has my old recordings from when I sent it down to them. Even the checkseal on the back of the P2 is still there intact, so it was never opened up when sent back to them.

If this is how they treat their customers, then I can't see Beyonwiz penetrating much more of the market.

Don't get me wrong, I love my Beyonwiz PVR's, I already have 3 others here, and can't watch tv without them.

IanSav · Post by **IanSav** » Thu Apr 11, 2013 21:39

Hi Bpratt,

I certainly hope and expect that this was accidental. Please give them a call and discuss what has happened. Let us know how you go.

Regards,
Ian.

bpratt · Post by **bpratt** » Thu Apr 11, 2013 23:13

I've already emailed them with details and my concerns.

Just have to hope they read their emails first up.

IanSav · Post by **IanSav** » Thu Apr 11, 2013 23:17

Hi Bpratt,

I suggested a telephone call to avoid any delays in E-Mail processing.

Regards,
Ian.

bpratt · Post by **bpratt** » Fri Apr 12, 2013 16:40

Emails got through okay, however they're now saying they weren't told the full story, and said they bench tested my P2 for 4 days without any problems!!

I told them initially that I was getting error 0000 as well as it locking up, but they assumed that it was only error 0000. For the couple of hours last night I ran it, none of those errors occurred.

Obviously it was a software issue to fix that one, as the checkseal is still intact.

They have now told me that all they can do is get it back to have it tested again, but this time they'll fasttrack it so it doesn't have to wait in line, and they told me it is not possible to send a replacement today.

They requested my approval to organise another RA, which I gave them when I got their email at lunchtime (I had to go out this morning and didn't get back till lunchtime).

So far no further correspondence from them, which is pretty damn pisspoor. I did resend the email again at around 2:50pm, but got no further response, so I thought I'd ring them up to find out what's going on at just after 4pm, but seems I was a couple of minutes too late, as they close at 4pm.

So there we have it, I've got a broken P2 that now won't got back until Monday, which means the earliest I can get it back won't be till the following week(takes at least 3 days to get down to Sydney), and it will be the same unit that was to all intents and purposes effectively DOA when I first got it.... like it's not as though I've been using it successfully for 6 or more months, but a new P2 that I bought.

I think it is only fair to expect a replacement in this situation.

celicasx · Post by **celicasx** » Fri Apr 12, 2013 22:56

bpratt wrote: Obviously it was a software issue to fix that one, as the checkseal is still intact.

I wouldn't base anything on the fact that the checkseal was still there. They're the company officially responsible for repairs and would have those seals available whenever they open a case.

bpratt · Post by **bpratt** » Fri Apr 12, 2013 23:39

celicasx wrote:
bpratt wrote: Obviously it was a software issue to fix that one, as the checkseal is still intact.
I wouldn't base anything on the fact that the checkseal was still there. They're the company officially responsible for repairs and would have those seals available whenever they open a case.

Oh yeah, I realise they would have plenty of checkseals there, but I really doubt they'd go to the extra effort to completely remove the old one, let alone stick the new one exactly in the same place as the old one and leave no traces of its removal.

bpratt · Post by **bpratt** » Mon Apr 29, 2013 16:13

Just an update, they've had it back there for a week now, but nothing heard from them so I've emailed them only to get the reply back telling me to lodge it via their faults system.

They've told me they'd fasttrack the repair, but I don't I'll see it back here before next month.

I really believe they should have replaced it with a new one, especially when it's been faulty from the time I unboxed it and plugged it in.

They certainly don't want to keep their customers happen, just take the money and screw them over if they have a problem.

bpratt · Post by **bpratt** » Thu May 09, 2013 22:15

Finally got it back yesterday and appears to be finally fixed.

Not real good that the 3 months after paying for it, nearly 2 months have been out getting it repaired.

Just thought I'd follow up my original post to let everyone know that it looks like I've finally got it all working.

Damn shame they never wrapped the box up in plastic as I sent it down in, as the box now has DealSpace tape stuck all over it, and the box has actually been torn and damaged. Still, I've got it now.

bpratt · Post by **bpratt** » Thu Jul 18, 2013 11:15

Following up on my woes with this particular P2, the HD has now totally failed.

The P2 was working, then appeared to reboot to present me with the initialize HD dialog, which I escaped from.

Pulled the HD out and put it in a caddy to find that windows reports No Media on it, so I'm guessing it has lost its FAT.

I had a feeling back in the early days it might have had some HD problems... I guess I should have simply replaced the HD back then, as now I've lost a stack of shows I wanted to keep.

prl · Post by **prl** » Thu Jul 18, 2013 11:28

Windows won't recognise a Beyonwiz recording drive, whether the HDD is OK or not. I'm not sure what the Win8 "No Media" error means. If it means it can't communicate with the HDD at all, then the HDD is indeed dead. But if it's an indication that it doesn't recognise the file system on the HDD, then it doesn't necessarily mean there's a problem with the drive, or the file system.

Beyonwiz recording HDDs are formatted as FAT32, but with a cluster size (512kB) that is much bigger than what is considered legal (32kB) by Windows.

OS X and Linux can happily deal with FAT32 file systems with large cluster sizes.

If the HDD is still OK you should be able to retrieve the shows by booting a Linux LiveCD on a PC if you don't have easy access to a Linux box or a Mac.

If the HDD is in fact OK, the underlying problem might be the power supply in the P2.

bpratt · Post by **bpratt** » Thu Jul 18, 2013 11:56

Thanks prl, I'll look in to that.

I'm running Win7 here, and have been able to read data off of other P2 HD's before without a problem.

I'll see about accessing a linux box to see if I can dig up the old shows off the HD later on.

Thanks for the suggestions.

I had to vent about this ongoing issue, and whilst HD's can fail at any time, the fact that my original problem also consisted of the P2 wanting me to initialise the HD when I first sent it back.

prl · Post by **prl** » Thu Jul 18, 2013 16:11

I'm not sure how you'd have been able to read P2 recording HDDs under Windows. Certainly there's no problem Windows reading external USB HDDs that the Beyonwiz has formatted - they're formatted FAT32 with plain ordinary 32kB clusters.

bpratt · Post by **bpratt** » Thu Jul 18, 2013 20:10

Anyway, this drive is cactus.

I've tried it under linux, and whilst linux detects that there is a /dev/sda device there, that's as far as it gets.

Tried a fdisk /dev/sda to see what partitions were there and just won't do it.

If anyone has any other suggestions, I'm wide open to them.

IanB · Post by **IanB** » Fri Jul 19, 2013 08:07

Seeing you have a linux then ...

# cat /proc/partitions

To find the device names linux is assigning to your disks. Match sizes etc to find the disk in question. /dev/sda, /dev/sdb, /dev/hda, etc are the raw disks. /dev/sda1, /dev/sda2, etc are the recognised partitions of those disks.

Assuming /dev/sda ...

# dd if=/dev/sda bs=512 count=1 | hexdump -C

This will read sector zero, where the partition table is, to see if it has any sort of contents. Fdisk expects the contents to be some sort of partition table and barfs if it is not so. If you get an io error the disk is probably stuffed, if you get data displayed then it might be the contents are just corrupted and a knowledgeable person can repair or reconstruct the damaged data.

Also try to read the smart stats from the disk ...

# smartctl -a /dev/sda

And you can ask smart to run internal diags ...

# smartctl -t short /dev/sda

This takes 3 to 5 minutes, you read the smart stats after a while to see the progress. There are also "conveyance" (sp?) and "long" internal diags available.

bpratt · Post by **bpratt** » Fri Jul 19, 2013 08:56

IanB wrote:Seeing you have a linux then ...

# cat /proc/partitions

I only get the drives that the system has booted from , i.e. hda and hda1 to hda5

Last line in /var/log/messages is :-

sd 1:0:0:0: Attached scsi removable disk sda

That's when I plug in the usb caddy.

IanB wrote: # dd if=/dev/sda bs=512 count=1 | hexdump -C

# dd if=/dev/sda bs=512 count=1 | hexdump -C
dd: opening `/dev/sda': No medium found

IanB wrote: # smartctl -a /dev/sda

# smartctl -a /dev/sda
smartctl version 5.36 [i686-pc-linux-gnu] Copyright (C) 2002-6 Bruce Allen
Home page is http://smartmontools.sourceforge.net/

Device: Generic Storage Device Version: 0.00
Device type: disk
Local Time is: Fri Jul 19 08:51:54 2013 EST
NO MEDIUM present on device
A mandatory SMART command failed: exiting. To continue, add one or more '-T permissive' options.

Didn't bother with the last one, as clearly the HD can't be seen.

Thank you very much for the help you have offered.

prl · Post by **prl** » Fri Jul 19, 2013 11:31

Given what you've seen on Linux, I definitely agree. The disk is dead, and there's no reasonable prospect of recovering data from it using normal OS functions.

bpratt · Post by **bpratt** » Fri Jul 19, 2013 13:38

Yeah, that's what I thought at the start of things.

Looks like all the V8 and F1 races I had from the start of the year on there have gone to the ol' bit bucket in the sky forever.

bpratt · Post by **bpratt** » Thu Sep 26, 2013 10:35

Just as a followup, the new WD Red drive I replaced it with has now failed as well !!

This is the worst Beyonwiz I have had, and worst run of HD failures I've ever seen.

This morning I was watching a recording off of another one of my P2's, and went to stop the playback, the remote control wasn't recognised, so I powered the P2 off from the button on the front, then powered it back up when it asked me to initialise the HD.

Ran the check HDD after saying No to the initialise, and it fails the check.

Have to go out now, but I'll try reading the HD on my linux box later on.

bpratt · Post by **bpratt** » Thu Sep 26, 2013 11:26

Delayed here for long enough to do what was originally suggested, and here's the results :-

cat /proc/partitions
major minor #blocks name

3 0 78150744 hda
3 1 75497436 hda1
3 2 1 hda2
3 5 2650693 hda5
8 16 976762584 sdb
8 17 976760001 sdb1
sys:~# dd if=/dev/sdb bs=512 count=1 | hexdump -C
1+0 records in
1+0 records out
512 bytes (512 B) copied, 0.000788406 seconds, 649 kB/s
00000000 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 |................|
*
000001b0 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 6e 90 cc 3a 00 00 00 01 |........n..:....|
000001c0 01 00 0c fe ff ff 3f 00 00 00 82 59 70 74 00 00 |......?....Ypt..|
000001d0 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 |................|
*
000001f0 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 55 aa |..............U.|
00000200
sys:~# smartctl -a /dev/sdb
smartctl version 5.36 [i686-pc-linux-gnu] Copyright (C) 2002-6 Bruce Allen
Home page is http://smartmontools.sourceforge.net/

Device: WDC WD10 EFRX-68JCSN0 Version:
Device type: disk
Local Time is: Thu Sep 26 11:20:15 2013 EST
Device does not support SMART

Error Counter logging not supported
Device does not support Self Test logging
accsys:~# smartctl -t short /dev/sdb
smartctl version 5.36 [i686-pc-linux-gnu] Copyright (C) 2002-6 Bruce Allen
Home page is http://smartmontools.sourceforge.net/

Short offline self test failed [unsupported scsi opcode]
sys:~#

This is a whole lot further than the last HD, so with a little help from others I might be able to recover all my recordings off of this HD.

Thanks in advance for any assistance offered.

prl · Post by **prl** » Thu Sep 26, 2013 16:01

All the smartctl output really says is "Device does not support SMART" (but it can talk to the HDD). The rest of the output of your smartctl -a /dev/sdb either has nothing to do with SMART, or is an elaboration on that statement. If the HDD is connected using USB, than SMART may not wor even if the HDD supports it.

I'd suggest doing an fsck -n /dev/sdb1 to see what sort of condition the file system is in. The '-n' tells fsck to report on errors, but to not try to fix them. It should open the HDD read-only and so it shouldn't make any problems worse.

bpratt · Post by **bpratt** » Thu Sep 26, 2013 17:48

Thanks Peter, here's the output as it didn't work though.

sys:~# fsck -n /dev/sdb1
fsck 1.40-WIP (14-Nov-2006)
fsck: fsck.vfat: not found
fsck: Error 2 while executing fsck.vfat for /dev/sdb1

prl · Post by **prl** » Thu Sep 26, 2013 18:58

bpratt wrote:Thanks Peter, here's the output as it didn't work though.

sys:~# fsck -n /dev/sdb1
fsck 1.40-WIP (14-Nov-2006)
fsck: fsck.vfat: not found
fsck: Error 2 while executing fsck.vfat for /dev/sdb1

fsck.vfat is the file system-specific program that fsck runs to check FAT volumes (vfat is for the longnames extension of FAT). Fsck is just a wrapper that finds the file system type from the HDD or from the command line and runs the appropriate specific checker program.

You may need to download a file systems tools module (DOS tools, perhaps) using the software manager for your Linux box. The software managers and the software packaging vary a bit between Linux distributions, so I can't be any more specific than that.

bpratt · Post by **bpratt** » Thu Sep 26, 2013 19:45

Okay, apt-get install dosfstools did it.

Here's what I get now.

fsck -n /dev/sdb1
fsck 1.40-WIP (14-Nov-2006)
dosfsck 2.11, 12 Mar 2005, FAT32, LFN
/ÿÿÿÿHYPE.RS~
Start does point to root directory. Deleting dir.
/ÿÿÿÿCONV.TD~
Start does point to root directory. Deleting dir.
/ÿÿÿÿRECO.RD~
Start does point to root directory. Deleting dir.
/ÿÿÿÿCONT.ENT
Start does point to root directory. Deleting dir.
/K\000\000\000Bt\000\000.\000ÿÿ
Start does point to root directory. Deleting dir.
Reclaimed 721982 unused clusters (569376768 bytes).
Free cluster summary wrong (1185729 vs. really 1907695)
Auto-correcting.
Leaving file system unchanged.
/dev/sdb1: 11 files, 8/1907703 clusters
sys:~#

peteru · Post by **peteru** » Thu Sep 26, 2013 21:55

Looks like you need to check the HDD cables and connectors in your Beyonwiz. I'm assuming you have already eliminated the Beyonwiz PSU as a source of your problems. If not, it may be a good idea to contact Mark (Warkus) and see what he thinks. Given that you had Err 0000 in the past, I'd be looking at the PSU and cabling first and motherboard second.

bpratt · Post by **bpratt** » Thu Sep 26, 2013 22:23

peteru wrote:Looks like you need to check the HDD cables and connectors in your Beyonwiz. I'm assuming you have already eliminated the Beyonwiz PSU as a source of your problems. If not, it may be a good idea to contact Mark (Warkus) and see what he thinks. Given that you had Err 0000 in the past, I'd be looking at the PSU and cabling first and motherboard second.

I did look at the PSU for swelled capacitors, and all looked okay. The cabling from the PSU to the motherboard is routed under the HD power cable and not covering the top of the PSU.

I have put in a new HD, in fact when I bought the last HD, I bought a second one as a spare, and it is currently working okay. I did not replace the SATA cable though.

warkus · Post by **warkus** » Thu Sep 26, 2013 22:57

SATA cable's are a MAJOR cause of issues in the wiz, most notable in the Lite-i machines, almost like they had a really dodgy batch go through...

I have not seen too many fail on P2 machines but bere in mind they are the same brand of cables in all the wiz machines so its certainly possible.

Definitely replace that to rule it out... for sure.

Mark

prl · Post by **prl** » Sun Sep 29, 2013 10:49

bpratt wrote:...
Start does point to root directory. Deleting dir.
/ÿÿÿÿRECO.RD~
Start does point to root directory. Deleting dir.
/ÿÿÿÿCONT.ENT
Start does point to root directory. Deleting dir.
...

They look like they might be the folders that you'd normally see as Recordings and Content. Not looking good.

bpratt wrote:Reclaimed 721982 unused clusters (569376768 bytes).
Free cluster summary wrong (1185729 vs. really 1907695)
Auto-correcting.
Leaving file system unchanged.

It's only recovered about 500MB here, which is less than I'd expect a single recording to be. I'd have expected that it would have recovered more space from the part of the file system that got isolated by the Recordings directory getting trashed.

bpratt wrote: /dev/sdb1: 11 files, 8/1907703 clusters
sys:~#

11 files left doesn't sound good at all. At least 3 of those files would have to be empty, since in all they only use 8 clusters.

It doesn't look as though fsck is likely to recover much in the way of usable data, but I could be wrong. Unless there's a Windows tool out there that will repair HDDs that have oversized clusters, and do a better job than fsck, there's not really a lot that I can suggest about data recovery apart from running fsck -p on the file system and let it do the repairs, and hope I'm wrong abut my guesses that it won't be able to recover much, if any, useful data.

bpratt · Post by **bpratt** » Sun Sep 29, 2013 21:48

So basically you are telling me I'm stuffed all over again.

I've never had so much bad luck with a Beyonwiz until now.

IanSav · Post by **IanSav** » Mon Sep 30, 2013 12:14

Hi Bpratt,

Can you please confirm the hard disk brand, model and size as well as the firmware version your Beyonwiz is currently running.

Regards,
Ian.

bpratt · Post by **bpratt** » Tue Oct 01, 2013 09:15

IanSav wrote: Can you please confirm the hard disk brand, model and size as well as the firmware version your Beyonwiz is currently running.

WD WD10EFRX 'red' 1Tb

Firmware is DPP2-01.07.351

IanSav · Post by **IanSav** » Tue Oct 01, 2013 12:05

Hi Bpratt,

Thanks, unfortunately this doesn't signal any obvious issues to me. Given that the disk is only 1TB I wonder if you should be trying to go back to 01.07.350 and seeing how that version of the firmware behaves.

Also, try the SATA cable replacement suggestion and ensure that *all* connections are correct and tight.

Regards,
Ian.

bpratt · Post by **bpratt** » Tue Oct 01, 2013 20:50

I'm sure the P2 came with that firmware already on it.

Sounds like a good idea to replace the SATA cable though.

Damn shame I've lost all of my recordings though, as I hadn't seen all of the Sandown 500 on it, as well as some other stuff I had recorded, but not yet watched.

Any identifying marks on the SATA cable that might indicate it was from that bad batch ? Didn't notice anything obviously when I put the new HD in the other day.

warkus · Post by **warkus** » Wed Oct 02, 2013 08:41

Hi,

No there is nothing that will help you identify it. All the SATA cables are red with no distinct markings that will highlight one over another.

As mentioned though, faulty SATA cables are most evident in the DP-Lite-i machines, where possibly, I suspect they got a bad batch so to speak, not the P2 machines, but the brand of cable is still the same in the P2.

Whilst I have had to replace a some cables in P2 machines as well, certainly not alarming amounts, and very sporadic. The Bad Batch comment would not apply to you unless you owned a Lite-i.

BUT, being that I know they "can" cause issues, and being that you have already replaced the HDD without success, I do recommend replacing it, if for no other reason than to simply rule that out as a cause of the problem, they are not expensive so its worth while doing this.

Mark

warranty (non) repairs

warranty (non) repairs

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