PCH A-100 HD Spin Up constantly after FW Upgrade?

[shaggyshaw]

(01-05-2009 05:04 AM)mwahal Wrote:  For me .. I disabled the Casgle in NMT Apps and its gone for me ! Did you double check by rebooting the PCH and make sure that Casgle is not running ?

Yes. I have checked it 10 times. I have tried everything. If i push power + delete, the PCH will completely power off (not standby mode). This stops the HDD from spinning, but I have to pull the power plug and re-insert when I want to use it again. I have been reading and this seems to be a bug that lots of people are experiencing since the last FW. I am considering rolling back to an older FW to see if that fixes the problem. I just don't want my drive to die on me. It gets hot enough the way it is. BTW, I have an A-110. Thanks again for your input.

[Pewes]

Well, I did the stupid thing to upgrade to the latest FW without reading in this forum first.... now I know better
I have tried everything suggested in this thread without success. I have PCH A100 with no network connection. My internal drive is a WD Caviar WD5000AAKB 500GB. Everything worked fine until I updated the firmware. Now when I turn my PCH off it takes about 70 seconds before the HDD spins up and it doesn’t stop until I start my PCH and turn it off again. And after 70 seconds the HDD spins up again....
I’m curious to know about all of you who actually managed to make this go away. Which HDD do you have, active network connection or not, etc, etc.
And the same goes for all of you that like me haven’t been able to get rid of this, which is your configuration?

[darkvoice]

It's pretty sad that users that paid for this hardware are being criticized for showing to be unhappy by the results the NMT software aimed to realize at this moment. I was quite used to post in the forum at the start, with suggestions for new features and bug tracking. This for what my knowledges allow of course. The truth is that nowadays the NMT should be a quite complete player on the firmware side, with an overall stability and with firmware upgrades that would just add brand new features instead of inserting new bugs in an already unstable product. There're several nice features already added to the player, but the most wanted (like a decent search engine, audio sync tuner, rar compatibility, etc) have been ignored for one year now. On the other side new bugs have come.
What's been answered to customers that have bought the product, that expected a certain kind of result and that just complain in the fairest way, is unacceptable. It can't be expected that users help developing and fixing a product that they bought. If they do, it's fine; if not, the manufacturer should do it on his own. For sure, next player i'm going to buy won't be the same as this one, nor my friends will.

[mwahal]

darkvoice,

The problem is no main stream company such as, say Sony, or Panasonic, or Philips want to come in this arena. Its still a hobbyist market. If you don't fit in the hobbyist category, then none of these devices are for you. Be it Zensonic, IOData, Tvico, MG, or next best kid on the block.
The only other solution is to build a computer and keep up with all the maintenance, OS bugs, viruses, codecs etc etc.

[Pewes]

I have now found a solution that worked for my PCH.
Looking through all the NMT services that are installed the "myiHome Server" serivce said starting... but it never did.
So I put my PCH on the network, made sure that "myiHome Server" serivce started, turned it off and TADA.. no more spin up of my hard drive

[nazidk12]

Hi folks,

Sorry none of the suggestions posted here work for me (PCH A100), hard drive still keeps spinning up. Have disable casgle thingy and myihome server - no luck.
Guess I'll be reverting to the previous FW. Mores the pity, I really liked the new bookmarking/stop-resume feature. Oh well lets hope they sort it out with the next release. Will definitely read the forum before updating next time!
Thanks for your suggestions.

[nazidk12]

Reverted to previous FW guess what? No more spin up issues. My advice is to skip this new update until they sort the hard disk issues out.

[Willem53]

(01-22-2009 10:56 PM)nazidk12 Wrote:  Reverted to previous FW guess what? No more spin up issues. My advice is to skip this new update until they sort the hard disk issues out.

well the majority of the posts in this thread was from before the FW upgrade....... so you now just proved that it is not FW related...

[graf]

(01-05-2009 04:21 AM)shaggyshaw Wrote:  BUMP! This is driving me crazy. I have the PCH in my bedroom and it spins up in the middle of the night for no reason. I have disabled all NMT apps and it still does it. Does anyone have any other ideas? Developers, please fix this int he next FW release.

Just a quick thought try removing the network cable from the back of the unit and see if the hard disk spins up/down

[nazidk12]

Thanks people,
I did notice after the upgrade though that spin up was almost instantaneous - after power down. Reverting to previous, it still happens, but once in a long while then stops very soon afterwards. Maybe a combination of the hard drive type and the new firmware perhaps?
Shaggyshaw, is unplugging the network a permanent fix? I mean I'd have to reconnect the ethernet cable each time if I want to browse a network share - annoying.

[graf]

(01-23-2009 03:08 AM)nazidk12 Wrote:  Thanks people,
I did notice after the upgrade though that spin up was almost instantaneous - after power down. Reverting to previous, it still happens, but once in a long while then stops very soon afterwards. Maybe a combination of the hard drive type and the new firmware perhaps?
Shaggyshaw, is unplugging the network a permanent fix? I mean I'd have to reconnect the ethernet cable each time if I want to browse a network share - annoying.

Try the network cable cause when the PCH see activity on the NIc that might trigger the Hard disk to start up. I have updated my late last night to the newset firmware. It says that it fixes this issue. I will see how it goes tonight when I stream something my my PC.

[nazidk12]

(01-12-2009 02:00 AM)darkvoice Wrote:  It's pretty sad that users that paid for this hardware are being criticized for showing to be unhappy by the results the NMT software aimed to realize at this moment. I was quite used to post in the forum at the start, with suggestions for new features and bug tracking. This for what my knowledges allow of course. The truth is that nowadays the NMT should be a quite complete player on the firmware side, with an overall stability and with firmware upgrades that would just add brand new features instead of inserting new bugs in an already unstable product. There're several nice features already added to the player, but the most wanted (like a decent search engine, audio sync tuner, rar compatibility, etc) have been ignored for one year now. On the other side new bugs have come.
What's been answered to customers that have bought the product, that expected a certain kind of result and that just complain in the fairest way, is unacceptable. It can't be expected that users help developing and fixing a product that they bought. If they do, it's fine; if not, the manufacturer should do it on his own. For sure, next player i'm going to buy won't be the same as this one, nor my friends will.

Darkvoice, point taken, but think about all the things this little unit can do and compare that to some other related devices (mostly from first tier CE companies) and how much you pay for them compared to the PCH. Its still a niche sector, as someone described earlier - a hobbyist piece of kit. If they were big enough to have a Sony sized R&D department etc.. yeah I would be pretty p###ed that some things just don't work straight out of the box (a standard iTunes like GUI, would be great), networking is pretty good, but still rather daunting for a mum/dad user to adapt to..etc. So, yeah you raise good points, but as far as bang for buck the delight of having the kids watch their films without piles of DVD cases and scratched discs everywhere, networking,HDMI, MKV support etc... makes it worth it. I've had more pluses using this thing than minuses and with the above points I mentioned I'm willing to forgive some 'less than polished' features and updates. Keep up the hard work.

[pchuser]

Quote:Maybe Syabas should pay a testing company for a proper test cycle to be performed on each release rather than relying on volunteers to "spot issues"

While we're speculating, maybe they should charge $400 for the product, too. Then again, maybe not. Nothing is free. You won't find many small companies with fast moving (and relatively inexpensive) products paying outside companies to test. Beta testing with knowledgeable volunteers has been around for as long as I can remember.

[HeedZ]

Ehm, paying for testing? Why, us testers are aware of what's happening, sounds like we didn't in that text...

We don't fix the code, we only test it and report, we are aware of this issue.

[CronoS]

(01-23-2009 04:12 AM)graf Wrote:  Try the network cable cause when the PCH see activity on the NIc that might trigger the Hard disk to start up. I have updated my late last night to the newset firmware. It says that it fixes this issue. I will see how it goes tonight when I stream something my my PC.

I had also the issue with the HDD spinup and the new firmware.. Everytime I poweroff the device the Disks spins up again..

I have disabled ALL my apps (only SMB and FTP server are on and the rest I am not using) and at this stage the disk is not spinning on anymore, I also rebooted the device several times hoping that this would fix this, but I am not a PCH technician so I don't know if that helped in any way But now it is still very quiet in my living room since this morning ..
The Casgle client was already turned off, but for now I am happy with this firmware, because I like te new Resume and the GOTO function, so I never want to revert back