DTR-T4000 - Stuck in maintenance mode

cyber

My Youview DTR-T4000 (1TB) keeps on booting up into maintenance mode. I tried the software reset, factory reset (keep recordings) and internet recovery (keep recordings) and they all came up with "Sorry, selected option failed".

The box is long out of warranty, so I looked on here and followed a guide to remove the hard drive, connected it to a PC and found that it was completely dead (not even recognised).

The only spare 2.5' drive I have lying around is an 80GB one. I thought I'd give it a try in the youview box and see if it works before going to buy a bigger drive. I checked the drive on the PC, it passes an extended SMART test and I deleted all the partitions/data on it.

I fitted it to the youview box but still cannot get past the maintenance mode screen. I've tried all the 5 options multiple times with no luck. The software reset reboots to the youview logo but then back to the maintenance mode screen. The hardware reset fails with the "Sorry, selected option failed" error. The internet recovery downloads something (the white progress bar fills up) but then also fails on "Sorry, selected option failed".

Is the fact that its only an 80GB drive the problem? Is it worth buying a new 1TB drive and fitting it? I don't really want to buy one and find that the same problem happens.

Roy

@cyber

Greetings, and welcome to the Community!

It sounds like you have done all the right things, and a T4000 is worth rescuing.

I think it very likely that an 80GB drive isn’t big enough; but others more knowledgeable than me may chip in, especially if you give it till Monday, when YouView staffers are back around.

You may also, if you haven’t already, find it worth asking in the BT TV section of the BT Community.

cyber

Thanks @Roy

I'll wait until tomorrow then.

cyber

Any YouView staff able to assist on this?

Roy

cyber said:

Any YouView staff able to assist on this?

@Sarah @Louise Murdoch @Stephen (resembles a software developer 😛)

Any thoughts for @cyber ?

Stephen

Not from me I'm afraid - I have never swapped drives myself and the maintenance mode software with regards to drive management is created by the manufacturer (Humax in this case) which is not really in my scope to interrogate how it works under the hood or what drive sizes it might be happy with.

Also obviously swapping drives is not a supported thing so you asking Humax directly will probably get that kind of response.

I'll informally ask your question internally but given that drive swapping is not really a thing we ever need to do here, answers may be difficult to get at.

Roy

@Stephen

What I hoped you might know offhand is how much of the drive the YouView software needs. If that is up in the tens of GBs, it might give a clue that 80GB is too small a disc here?

Stephen

I interrogated an old T2100 and all the system/metadata/trickplay partitions seem to take up about 63GB.

From asking around, the Humax Maintenance Mode should just set those partitions up if given a blank drive with no partition table and allocate whatever the remaining space is to a recording partition.

This drive in question only 17GB "left" might be a bit of a push though, not sure.

mhar

I've had the same problem - an endless maintenance loop. I did remove the 1 TB drive and checked it on my windows PC, it was OK and showed all the partitions. Swopping to a similar drive did not work either, but in "maintenance mode you will lose all your recordings" did reformate and add new partitions.
Unless there's a secret code or switch combinations to do a Master Reset then we have a T4000 brick.

Roy

mhar said:

I've had the same problem - an endless maintenance loop. I did remove the 1 TB drive and checked it on my windows PC, it was OK and showed all the partitions. Swopping to a similar drive did not work either, but in "maintenance mode you will lose all your recordings" did reformate and add new partitions.
Unless there's a secret code or switch combinations to do a Master Reset then we have a T4000 brick.

@mhar

Maintenance Mode Option 5 is a full Factory Reset, and is the same as the Factory Reset in Settings, which you probably can’t get to in the current circumstances.

But putting in a replacement hard drive and having the box format it and set up partitions should result in a healthy box exiting Maintenance Mode and starting the initial setup of the YouView box from scratch.

If it isn’t doing this, but instead just looping back into Maintenance Mode, then that would point to a hardware problem elsewhere in the box than on the hard drive. 

So most likely you do have a brick, alas. Though if the Maintenance Mode loop includes the option to input an Option, then at least try that with 5 as the Option, before giving up on it.