MOC freezes, deletes files, 'breaks' folder

Submitted by martins on Wed, 2017-01-11 08:33

Forums:

Never had this problem before:

MOC running on Linux Mint 18 - freezes while playing music off of an ExFat USB disk.

Each time this happens, the files in the playlist are deleted, and the folder containing them 'breaks' - i.e. I can't delete the folder, or copy the files back to it.

Any tips on how to fix this?

Thanks!

jcf

Wed, 2017-01-11 08:58

This almost certainly sounds like a USB drive failure.

MOC doesn't delete files or play with directories, so I'd suggest running some diagnostics on the drive (e.g., badblocks). That other utilities are also having problems indicates that the hardware is the common point of failure.

martins

Thu, 2017-01-12 07:56

Ok cool, thanks. I'm baffled though: this is a brand new Toshiba drive so I wouldn't expect it to fail.

Can you recommend a tool that I can check with, please? I'm not very familiar with Linux since I only run it to play music. Thanks!

jcf

Thu, 2017-01-12 09:04

In my experience, hardware usually fails when it's brand new (faulty componentry) or getting old (worn out componentry). So this would fall into the "take off" phase of its flight; if you've caught it early enough you might be able to claim on the warranty.

I would try smartmontools (assuming your drive has SMART support) and/or badblocks (which is a standard utility and comes bundled with most distributions). Smartmontools will allow you to have the drive run firmware diagnostics and badblocks will allow you to write/read test each sector.

martins

Sat, 2017-02-18 17:47

So after some back & forth by email with developer JCF (thanks man!) and testing on different machines, turns out that it was indeed the disk that is to blame and not MOC.

What can I say? The fact that Toshiba is a big name apparently doesn't mean they make quality harddisks.

kmws

Sat, 2017-02-18 18:49

I'd say that by buying stuff from 'big names', you get higher probability of working stuff. And if it fails, maybe you will get better guarantee service.