myPVR Disk Issues
Should you have problems booting your myPVR there is a chance you are having a problem with your disks and the associated storage volumes. This will usually take the form of a boot time error message:
Loss of power to myPVR (due to power cuts, etc) whilst it is recording or performing some other disk intensive task is the most likely reason for this message to appear. When this happens it isn’t always possible for the system to recover all of the damaged files automatically, and then it will require some form of manual intervention.
Initial troubleshooting
Should the above error message appear you should enter your root user password. Contact support if you do not have this password.
You should then get a command prompt of # from where you can enter commands. First we need to check if you have IDE hard drives or SATA hard drives. Please type the following command:
This should return similar output to the following
/dev/hda1 3929312 2446320 1283388 66% /
If the file system is /dev/hda1 then you have an IDE hard drive, and if it is /dev/sda1 you have a SATA hard drive.
Check Main OS File System
First we want to check that the main OS file system is correct
For an IDE disk type:
For a SATA disk type:
When prompted you will normally type “y” to confirm any actions. Should the system report a considerable number of errors, or be unable to recover then you should contact OpenMedia support.
Check Video File System
myPVR is configured with two virtual drives, one for the Operating System, and one for all of your video and media files. By storing all video files on a separate volume it is much easier to patch the OS as well as grow the media volume by adding additional disks.
The command to check the media volume doesn’t depend on the type of disk used. Simply type the following command:
When prompted you will normally type “y” to confirm any actions. Should the system report a considerable number of errors, or be unable to recover then you should contact OpenMedia support.
Ongoing issues
Should you experience ongoing disk issues there is a chance that your hard drive is on the verge of failing. OpenMedia only use high quality Seagate hard drives in myPVR which carry a 5 year guarantee. The first year is serviced by OpenMedia, and subsequent years direct by Seagate.
Seagate provide a disk troubleshooting tool that can be booted off CD to analyse their hard drives for any issues. This tool can be downloaded from their website via the following link:
Download the disk image and create a bootable CD using your favourite CD burning application.
Booting Seagate Disk Tools
Insert your burnt CD into myPVR, reboot and press the F8 key during the initial splash screen. You can then select the CD drive to be your boot drive as shown below.
You should then see the Seagate tools boot as shown to the right.
Quick Test
We recommend you initially run their quick test which should take about 2 minutes. Select your hard drive as shown below and then choose Quick Diagnostic. Make sure you select the disk where the full model information and serial number are shown.
You should then get a progress bar as the disk is checked. If there are no issues you should get a green dot against the disk as shown below right.
If an error has been reported then you should select View Report and send any important details to OpenMedia Support.
Full Scan
Even if your disk passed the Quick Scan there is still a chance your hard drive still has problems. You should now click on Diagnostics and reselect the hard drive. Then select the Full Diagnostic option which performs a much longer scan that can take several hours to perform as shown below.
Again if the disk has no issues you should get a green dot against the disk. If errors have been reported on the full scan click on View Report to see if your hard drive will need to be replaced.