How to Take Action and Resolve HDD Alerts

Hard Drive SMART Error

A Hard Drive SMART Error is a warning that a hard drive is likely to fail soon. The error occurs when the system detects that a SMART threshold has been met, such as High temperature, Excessive bad sector, Slow spin up, and Read retries.

• The details section may include additional information about the particular alerting drive.

RESOLUTION

• The error is due to physical problems with the drive and the drive will need replacing.

Hard Drive Missing or Failed

Hard Drive Missing or Failed means that at some point in time the OS lost communication with the drive or was unable to detect the drive using its current configuration.

• Note the additional text to the right showing details about the alerting drive.

RESOLUTION

1. Reboot the recorder, if this resolves the issue continue to monitor for alerts
2. Navigate to Setup > System Settings > Storage Tab, ensure all drives are checked, and click the SAVE button.
3. If a drive is missing on the storage tab:
4. Power the recorder off and reseat the drive or SATA cables connected to the hard drive and motherboard.
5. Power the recorder on and navigate to the storage tab.
6. If the missing drive is now showing, ensure it's checked and click the SAVE button.
7. If the drive is still not showing, replace the drive.
8. If replacement drive still does not show, this may indicate a hardware problem with the recorder. Please contact technical support for assistance setting up a RMA.

NOTE: Upon completion of any of the above steps, you will always want to monitor the system. If the alert returns, you will want to replace the affected hard drive accordingly.

Hard Drive Permissions Error

A Hard Drive Permissions Error means that the operating system thought it did not have the necessary access rights to read, write, or modify files on a specific hard drive. Often, these alerts are false alarms and the system never stopped recording and is still operating properly.

• Note the additional text to the right showing details about the alerting drive

RESOLUTION

1. Reboot the recorder.
2. If the alert persists, ensure the recorder has been updated to the latest software and image available.
3. Navigate to Setup > System Settings > Storage Tab, ensure all drives are checked, and click the SAVE button.
4. If the alert returns, please contact technical support for further assistance.

Hard Drive Area Status Error

A Hard Drive Area Status Error indicates that the operating system has detected a problem within a specific section of the hard drive.

• Note the additional text to the right showing details about the Area Status Error.
• Most operating system generated area status alerts can be remedied by allowing the system to function normally and attempt to open/overwrite the same file again or simply rebooting the hardware.

           RESOLUTION

1. Reboot the recorder.
2. If the alert persists, ensure the recorder has been updated to the latest software and image available.
3. Navigate to Setup > System Settings > Storage Tab, ensure all drives are checked and click the SAVE button.
4. If the alert returns, please contact technical support for further assistance.
   
   Additional information about Hard Drive Area Status Error Codes:

• Multiple error codes can refer to the same base problem and are entirely based on the information provided by the operating system itself.

Example: Error code 3, 13, and 1392 all refer to failure to create a file/folder path on the hard drive mentioned in the alert details.

• Other common codes include the following:
  • Windows Error Codes:
    • Error 0: Bad Allocation
    • Error 2: Failed to Open File
    • Error 3: Failed to Create
    • Error 80: Failed to Open File
    • Error 1392: Failed to create folders for path
  • Linux Error Codes:
    • Error 5: Input/Output Error
    • Error 30: Read-only file system

How to Determine Which Hard Drive Correlates to the Hard Drive Alert

Hard drives will always have unique serial numbers which can be used to correlate the alerting drive with the physical drive installed in the recorder. The physical hard drive will show its serial number printed on the manufacturers sticker.

The details column of the hard drive alert may show additional details about the device name or mount point of the drive such as /dev/sdb or /mnt/data2 or D:

If the details section of the alert shows something like "/dev/sdb1" then log into the recorder and navigate to Setup > System Settings > Storage tab. This tab should list all of the drives (sda1, sdb1 etc...) and will also list the serial number that corresponds to sdb1 as shown below:

If the drive is missing from the storage tab, note the serial numbers of all of the good working drives and then compare them to the serial numbers of the drives inside the unit. The alerting drive will be the one with the serial number that does not match any of your noted serial numbers.