Samsung LED TV corrupts PVR (timeshift) connected USB HDD

[teknasia]

Hi gents, hi geeks, hi experts, hi SamyGo staff,

I don't want to discuss here about external USB HDD connected to read your DivX or MKV or Xvid files!
I don't want to discuss here about problems of USB sticks or USB keys of X or Y GB containing your files!
I don't want to discuss about external USB HDD for which the TV did not measure a suitable transfer speed (change the disc!)

==> I actually want to discuss here about the LED TV of series D6000, D6500, D7000 and D8000 not recognizing the USB external drive assigned to PVR and so timeshifting and TV recordings features, after a while (after a couple of weeks).
==> The EXACT problem description is that the TV does not recognize your PVR dedicated external USB HDD anymore after a while (a couple of weeks of utilization).

==> I experienced the issue with my EU46D6510 for several times now, with an external USB WD of 40 GB and another one of 60 GB, non powered but with external power capability (there is a DC plug on the HDD box). I now connected it with a universal AD/DC transfo, set on 5V 200 mA. I don't know yet if the HDD will work for a longer time (2012/06/19)...
==> These 2 WD discs were successfully checked by the TV for speed transfers.

==> There is absolutely no solution known and found on the Internet at the month of June 2012!
Neither solution found on Tome's Hardware or SamyGo expert forums for Samsung LED TVs and firmwares, neither solution given by any Samsung support center or forum (inculding this one .

==> Powering the TV on and off and on etc. plus changing the USB port used behind the TV does not change anything to the issue.
==> We know that this bug affects Samsung LED TV of series D6000, D6500, D7000 and D8000 (according with your posts)
==> We know the USB HDD specifications given by the manual: 5400 rpm minimum.
==> We don't know if externally powered USB HDD change that issue or not?
==> We don't know if big sizes external USB HDD generate that issue or not (1 TB, 1.5 TB, 2TB, 3TB)?
==> We don't know if the "pre-formatting" file system (under Windows for instance, FAT or FAT32 or NTFS) is of any importance? (because you know that your TV is formatting it on another file system or you may not know ) (see the technical stuffs below)

Now some technical things... ;-P

*** The external USB HDD is formatted by your Samsung LED TV in XFS file system.
*** XFS file system is a Linux compatible file system, readable on Ubuntu. It seems also being a file system developped by Sillicon Graphics for a good use of video streamings.
*** I don't know if it does a quick formatting or a complete formatting of the HDD, because this does actually takes a couple of minutes only on my 40 GB WD. So discussing about Windows "pre-formatting" in NTFS or FAT32 or FAT format seems to me out of topic. I don't know if it is of any importance for the XFS formatting done by the TV.
*** You can boot an Ubuntu or PCLinuxOS live CD on your Windows machine in order to access to your TV formatted USB HDD.
*** You cannot read the recorded video files as they are DRM protected by Samsung (an un-understandable choice for legal public TV programs but anyway...). There are about 5 file extentions recorded by the TV for one recorded program and the .SRF file contains the DRM protected video. SamyGo offers tools to un-DRM your Samsung LED TV PVR.

>>> And the most important points are:
*** When my 2 WD external USB HDD of 40 and 60 GB were unrecognized, because this is it!!!, they were also unrecognized under Linux Ubuntu or PCLinuxOS sessions.
*** When the TV newly formats the USB HDD, these HDD were correctly recognized and mounted under Linux Ubuntu session.
*** After the USB HDD is unrecognized by the TV and also by the Linux system, a formatting under Windows makes the HDD discoverable again by the LED TV, that will again offers you to prepare the disc for timeshifting and recording (so formatting it in XFS file system).
*** I tried Ubuntu tool for XFS discs: xfs_repair (also xfs_check), but the command returned wrong magic numbers and also a wrong magic number for the second parsing, and that second parsing could not recognize the disc. I don't know after that check if the TV will recognize my WD again, because I am now testing with the second one permanently powered (the HDD is under power even when the TV is in standby).

>>> Issues may possibly come from:
*** The size of the HDD too small for timeshift + records. But you used 1 or 2 TB discs as well. But Samsung guy said the opposite when writing that you maybe use too big recent HDDs! And I maybe use too small ones?! (40 and 60 GB)...
*** I don't know if mixing timeshift and records is the origin of the problem on the disc, but we do not have the choice I think.
*** I don't know if after many hours of timeshifting the TV erases the XFS HDD file system information itself?
*** I don't know if shuting down the TV at the wrong moment may definitely corrupt the XFS file system on USB disc?
*** I don't know if plugging a USB key for seeing another video file may make the TV corrupting the plugged PVR USB HDD.
*** I don't know if at a certain moment a power disturbance is created on the TV USB ports? Particularly when I plugged or unplugged a USB Key or another USB HDD for reading video files.


In conclusion:
You see here how complex is that very bad issue, maybe a very bad bug in Samsung PVR code.
This is a shame that Samsung does not respond and did not implement a firmware upgrade for the TV until now.
You are very welcome to feed that thread if you can find any more detail, any possible fix, any workaround...

Thanks to all and wish you good luck with that problem (some people may have abandoned at that point after having read my post, I am sorry for them . Yes it is a very complex problem, for which I have reach my tech limits.
Teknasia

[arris69]

...
*** The external USB HDD is formatted by your Samsung LED TV in XFS file system.

this is the problem

*** XFS file system is a Linux compatible file system, readable on Ubuntu. It seems also being a file system developped by Sillicon Graphics for a good use of video streamings.
...

i personally never would store any kind of data on a xfs partition. (just as note: same for reiserfs and jfs)

the only thing you can do is "repair" the filesystem with xfs-tools, if the tools not detect the partition then it's full f....d up (you can try maybe different versions of the tools but iguess you need to format the partition)

[juusso]

What if your both hdd`s (40 and 60 Gb) have bad sectors and maybe broken? Just to be sure the problem is TV, but not hdd it self.

[teknasia]

@ juuso,

I don't think that both my WDs have bad sectors in the file system management part. Because they used to work very correctly for a couple of weeks each: pause a TV show, fast forward, fast backward, stop, record a TV show, show it then delet it etc. I use to have a dozen of TV shows recorded on that WD HDD, shown by the Smart Hub.
And then I could re-format them under Windows 7 in NTFS file format and copy several gig of files.

[Zorya]

@ teknasia,
First of all, sorry for my english as this is not my native language.

I'm also interested by a solution because I'm experimenting the same issue.

*** The size of the HDD too small for timeshift + records. But you used 1 or 2 TB discs as well. But Samsung guy said the opposite when writing that you maybe use too big recent HDDs! And I maybe use too small ones?! (40 and 60 GB)...

It's look like to be independent of the size. I've experimented the problem with a 80Go disk size. (Storex CLUB Pocket Disk - External drive - auto-powered)

*** I don't know if plugging a USB key for seeing another video file may make the TV corrupting the plugged PVR USB HDD.

In my case, the problem appears while I haven't plugged any USB key on TV. (Although I saw some video files from my DLNA network)

Zo.

[Jason]

I don't know the solution to this problem, but I'm experiencing the same issues - here follows a description in case it helps with working out the problem:

Samsung TV: UE37D6750
HDD: Western Digital non-powered 500GB

Issues experienced:

1) After about 6 weeks of use HDD not recognised following power cut (I did a full windows re-format overnight, then quick re-format on the TV - and obviously I lost all previously recorded shows)
2) 4 months later TV had trouble accessing HDD content from the file browser style menu, in that it couldn't get past the first page - changing the order in which programs were sorted seemed to fix the issue - possibly a database corruption?
3) Last night, about 4.5 months after previous re-format, HDD not recognised. This happened straight after I stopped a program recording after about 1 minute so I could change channels.

It seems to me that in certain circumstances the TV can "ungracefully" stop the HDD, at which point the HDD no longer works. After issue 1 I spoke with a Samsung technician who eluded to the fact that the TV doesn't deal very well with stopping the HDD - like back on Windows 95 if you switched off the computer by the power button without shutting down properly, you'd often get an issue or at least a check for an issue on the HDD.

[taxi058]

Take a look at

http://forums.cnet.com/7723-13973_102-5 ... msg5344411

[jorden]

I don't want to discuss about external USB HDD for which the TV did not measure a suitable transfer speed (change the disc!)

I actually want to discuss here about the LED TV of series D6000, D6500, D7000 and D8000 not recognizing the USB external drive assigned to PVR and so timeshifting and TV recordings features, after a while (after a couple of weeks).
The EXACT problem description is that the TV does not recognize your PVR dedicated external USB HDD anymore after a while (a couple of weeks of utilization).

I experienced the issue with my EU46D6510 for several times now, with an external USB WD of 40 GB and another one of 60 GB, non powered but with external power capability (there is a DC plug on the HDD box). I now connected it with a universal AD/DC transfo, set on 5V 200 mA. I don't know yet if the HDD will work for a longer time (2012/06/19)...
These 2 WD discs were successfully checked by the TV for speed transfers.

==> There is absolutely no solution known and found on the Internet at the month of June 2012!
Neither solution found on Tome's Hardware or SamyGo expert forums for Samsung LED TVs and firmwares, neither solution given by any Samsung support center or forum (inculding this one .

==> Powering the TV on and off and on etc. plus changing the USB port used behind the TV does not change anything to the issue.
==> We know that this bug affects Samsung LED TV of series D6000, D6500, D7000 and D8000 (according with your posts)
==> We know the USB HDD specifications given by the manual: 5400 rpm minimum.
==> We don't know if externally powered USB HDD change that issue or not?
==> We don't know if big sizes external USB HDD generate that issue or not (1 TB, 1.5 TB, 2TB, 3TB)?
==> We don't know if the "pre-formatting" file system (under Windows for instance, FAT or FAT32 or NTFS) is of any importance? (because you know that your TV is formatting it on another file system or you may not know ) (see the technical stuffs below)

Now some technical things... ;-P

[plovgren]

Help!

I have a Samsung UE40D6517 LED TV.

For the third time, the attached USB harddrive is "Unknown" to the TV. The previous two times I had to reformat the hard drive. I don't want to do it this time.

The strange thing is that I can time-shift with the hard drive, that is I can pause live TV.

I can schedule recordings as well.

But I cant view recordings. When launcing that app, I only receive "Unknown" as an error message.

I have installed UFS Explorer on my PC, but it can read the file structure on the hard drive.

I am at a loss here guys.

Does anyone have any suggestions?

/Per

[mircomat]

Hi and thanks to Jordan for posting your experience!

I came to the same preliminary solution as found under your CNET link, with XFS_repair using the -L tag to replace the "dirty" log. I'll take a look at the idea with checking the partition labels and replacing any NTFS.

I have the impression that the TV sometimes does a bad job of writing the log and thus makes it unmountable. Hopefully someone has an idea how to improve the situation.

Best regards
Mirco.
UE46D6540