Hard Disk Failure?

Just uploaded some new MP3s to my player. All seemed to go during the upload process, but when it got to rebuilding the database, one of the hard disks (don't know which) seemed to be having difficulty, making a rhythmic scanning noise. The rebuilding seemed to take a long time to complete too.

Now it's finished, I get errors on almost all the tracks I just uploaded, of '[trackname] could not be synchronized., error 0xc004101e', and also, about 15 other playlists which have been unaltered for quite some time have errors reported in Emplode, of 'The length of [playlistname] did not match the actual number of children detected'.

Does this sound ominous? Any ideas on my best plan of action? How do I even tell which hard disk might be failing?

From TMan's lookup script:

0xC004101E is "Read-only file system" (Player error)

Sounds like the player may have rebooted during the song upload. Or, by any chance, did you recently add some new programs which are @EXEC'ing from /drive0? If you exec something from /drive0 in AC mode, the synchs will fail because the drive can't be unmounted and then remounted read-write.

And yes, hard disk trouble is possible, too. Have you had any of the other symptoms of disk trouble?

Hi Tony, thanks for the quick reply!

I've not had any other evidence of hard disk problems. I've also not added anything to the player recently - the last change was to put v2.00 final and Hijack on, but I've uploaded since that, before today, and it went fine. I don't have any @EXEC programs at the moment.

I don't think the player rebooted during the upload - it was a single album I'd just bought and ripped, so I was watching it. You know how in Emplode, as each song finishes uploading, the icon in the playlist window changes to show it's done? Well it did that for the first four, but for the last 7 tracks, it spent the right amount of time uploading, but didn't change the icon. Those are the tracks that gave errors.

I've done nothing since the reboot, and I've still got the error window open. What's my best way to either confirm it is a hard disk problem, or rule it out?

Cheers!

What's my best way to either confirm it is a hard disk problem, or rule it out?

Reboot the player and watch its serial output in Hyperterminal. That's only if the disk was still giving you trouble at reboot time...

OK, just done that. The only thing that looks out of place is the message:

! tunedb_disk.cpp :1274:Database size mismatch error.

At which time, the player paused. Presumably this was while it rebuilt the database internally? No funny noises from the hard disks this time either.

Guess the next step is to see what Emplode thinks I have in the way of playlists, and try and upload the songs again?

For once, I'm not miffed at it 'checking disk integrity'.

Yeah, and do at least one plain "synch" without adding songs so that it'll fix the database...

Well, the disk integrity check finished fine. Is that a pretty certain sign the disks are OK? (I.e. is it equivalent to performing a surface scan or similar?)

Is that a pretty certain sign the disks are OK?

No, not certain. It does mean that the disks are not having trouble right now. But if it's an intermittent problem like a loose solder joint, then the problem might come back later.

(I.e. is it equivalent to performing a surface scan or similar?)

No, it just makes sure the file links and the sector allocations are OK. In other words, it checks the file data to make sure it's OK, not the disk hardware reliability.

Well, finished resyncing it a few times, and just uploaded the songs it didn't manage the first time, with no problems.

Hopefully it was just a glitch, and not a sign of impending doom!

Is it possible to perform a surface scan without having to use the Disk Builder?

You can run /bin/hdstress. I am almost certain it is non-destructive.

I'm sure there's a way, but I don't know how.

In reply to:

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I am almost certain it is non-destructive

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That's nice to know!

Any idea if it will check both drives?

Greetings!

/bin/hdstress is what is called by the builder after everything is done. I have used it in the past. I am almost certain it is read only, but I have never really proven that. At least, I have never found any nastiness occuring from running it. Probably best to have someone who knows better confirm that, but it is a handy tool.