Hard Drive HD Failure Symptoms

[Maingham]

Is there any symptoms of a HD going bad?

Equipment:
Quad, WD Element 5TB External, RCA Antenna, ROKU TVS for playback

I have been using a WD Element 5TB Drive for about 2.5 years and since the last update (2.2.42), I am getting tons of “Playback Failure” errors. Not sure if that is the issue or a coincidence.

I thought it may have been the update but, since I am not seeing others with the issue, I am thinking it could be the drive???

Sometimes I get the spinning wheel for a few minutes first, sometimes it comes sooner than others.
This AM, several recordings wouldn’t play, live TV wouldn’t play, then the recordings that I tried before worked.

I am considering an external Crucial 4TB SSD to replace it with but it is 4-5 times the cost.

[djk44883]

Can't get past extreme pixelization

Yes - you can stream a single Live TV stream without the drive. This is the recommended approach to remove the drive from the list of potential problems. I’d be surprised if it was the issue in this case, but it’s an easy test that you can do yourself in a matter of minutes and requires no additional purchase so it’s worthwhile.

A problem-solving / trouble-shooting option is to remove the drive and see if you can watch live TV with out issues.

[presuming Quad is new generation actually named quad and not 4-tuner version]

[Maingham]

It will stream a single channel without the HD attached. It is working fine now, the issue seems to be intermittent

[Scott_Geary]

Mine started having HD failures after the update too. Support is trying to say it’s a corrupt hard drive. Well, it worked fine before. Coincidence? I think not.

[djk44883]

Years ago I had the boilerplate support response - your drive is [going] bad. I’ve posted, copied (backed-up) contents to another drive. Ran test - no error copying, no error on filesystem… no drive error. Reset tablo, let it format drive, copied everything back – no problems since.

That’s not to say there’s never any problems with users drives. I believe it’s a somewhat generic error message in the secret logs. (actually stored per recording recording JSON data).

video_details:
    "error":null
    "warnings":[]

How can some recordings have drive failure while others are fine? Has the drive failed or not?

[jimtablotv]

@Scott_Geary

Mine started having HD failures after the update too. Support is trying to say it’s a corrupt hard drive. Well, it worked fine before. Coincidence? I think not.

In my experience and not limited to Tablo an update sometimes exposes a failing hard drive. Other times a software update corrupts data. These things can happen. It’s worth evaluating the possibility.

[djk44883]

@jimtablotv

It’s worth evaluating the possibility.

There are a multitude of possibilities, including update. It is a possibility. It’s firmware update, installed internally not touching the drive. Other than the vague “Bug fixes and performance improvements” there is no mention of anything touching the filesystem. All the guide graphics are stored internally, if/when they change that.

There is/was a method to roll back to your previous firmware version. You can the drives integrity, not necessarily the filesystem via PC. You can check the filesystemvia fsck…like many other users, and discover your tablo is they only problem - and that only comes from secret logs via tech support.
ok, I probably vented enough – thank for possibly understanding and sorry for any inconvenience.

[Maingham]

After continuing to dig into this, I got into a state where I could not connect Roku, PC or phone but,… it was showing on my network.

After calling support, we were unable to get the Tablo to work with the hard drive detached,… which is a sign the drive has failed.

I replaced with a 2TB Samsung T7.

[jimtablotv]

I agree it’s probable not firmware related but firmware is sometime the straw that broke the hard drive platter.