Hacking What damage PS4 HDD takes if it gets too much panic shutdowns?

[ItsmeAJ]

Recently somebody calls me a liar about PS4 hard drives getting bad sectors or die completely if it gets too much panic shutdowns by doing jailbreak.

So what's really the hardware's damage from panic shutdowns your ps4s get if not the hard drives?

I thought this was common knowledge with pc components that cutting power suddenly from hard drives a.k.a panic shutdowns while they are running may cause damage and leads to bad sectors which you will have to toss them to trash can and buy new ones eventually.

My 1TB hard drive on Ps4 pro got bad sectors after pretty much panic shutdowns at the early stages of 5.05 jailbreak more than 2 years ago and it's only under 100 hours running according to the report from crystal disk info when I checked it at the time on my PC.

I've been on jailbreak 4.05 with ps4 fat, 4.55 with slim and 5.05-6.72 with a pro just in case anyone asks for my experiences with ps4 jailbreak.

Feedbacks through the topic, will add more as people reply with their experiences:

- https://gbatemp.net/threads/what-da...ch-panic-shutdowns.575060/page-2#post-9243173

- https://gbatemp.net/threads/what-da...ch-panic-shutdowns.575060/page-2#post-9250142

- https://gbatemp.net/threads/what-da...ch-panic-shutdowns.575060/page-2#post-9249467

- https://gbatemp.net/threads/restore-savegames-from-db-backup.577707/

- https://gbatemp.net/threads/what-da...ch-panic-shutdowns.575060/page-3#post-9288601

 

[godreborn]

it's probably not likely to hurt it. something disastrous happening is likely rare. I know both @Leeful and @KiiWii have had hundreds of kps during testing of their payload frontends. I've never read a post where they said their hdd died or anything to that effect because of it.

 

[Hayato213]

Well HDD dying is normal, unless you started with the HDD health being bad, need replacement then I wouldn't worry too much about it. There is no HDD health checker for the PS4 once it is formatted for PS4 file system. The PS4 would shut off on it own once the HDD start giving you problems.

 

[ItsmeAJ]

I know hard drive failure is normal problem, I have 2x3tb and 1x2tb hdds that got bad sectors because at some points in the past, the power was cut down while they were running by power outages or some sorts of mistake which I made by unintentionally kicked to hdd box's adapter.

To me, panic shutdown is not different from that, ps4 is running, that means it is reading/writing data on/to the hard drive, kernel panic cut the power instantly and increase the rate of hard drive failure, some drives can withstand pretty much but some don't and died early.

You guys have not had any drives that failed does not mean others have not as well, so I just wonder cutting power of hard drive while it is writing/reading will cause damage to it, is a common knowledge or not? At least friends around me who have been building pc systems all know about this and we thought anyone who use electronics devices with attached hard drive acknowledged this problem.

 

[godreborn]

if that is an issue for you, you should probably go legit. it's already been acknowledged that kp-less hen isn't possible and probably never will be.

 

[ItsmeAJ]

if that is an issue for you, you should probably go legit. it's already been acknowledged that kp-less hen isn't possible and probably never will be.

It's a risk I accept by running jaikbreak and understand panic shutdown is a side effect. That's not an issue with me, problem solved with a new hdd or ssd as replacement for one that failed.

I'm talking about the damage hard drives could get with panic shutdowns and the fact there are extremely rare drives that failed because of this.

I don't know, but it someone believe that I made up this story about the ps4 drive that failed after getting pretty much panic shutdowns while it was on 5.05 early stage =))

 

[godreborn]

I don't play my ps4 at all, just test and dump stuff on it. I'm not too worried about losing data. as with anything, always keep backups just in case. it shouldn't be a problem then.

 

[godreborn]

I'd suggest just staying in rest mode. 90%+ kp seem to happen either after a payload is deployed (definitely if many are deployed one after the other) or if many are deployed, then you go to shutdown the system. the latter has happened to me when I was dumping themes for someone. I had to deploy the ftp payload after each them install to dump it, so I once had 13 themes, so it was maybe 15-20 payloads deployed. no kp, but there was an issue when turning the system off. it was like a kp as I had to turn the system back on with the button on the system, not the controller. I've had that happen a few times. it seems to be either that or a full blown kp shutting the system off. it's not that common on 5.05, dunno about 6.72.

 

[ItsmeAJ]

no kp, but there was an issue when turning the system off. it was like a kp as I had to turn the system back on with the button on the system, not the controller. I've had that happen a few times. it seems to be either that or a full blown kp shutting the system off. it's not that common on 5.05, dunno about 6.72.

This happens on 6.72, if I recall correctly when using c0d3m4st4 some early version firmwares of esp8266 for 6.72, when I turned off the ps4 but couldn't turn it on with controller, it's like how system reacts after a kernel panic.

it happens less on 5.05, and I've never seen it once before, until running 6.72.

 

[godreborn]

should be okay with one deployment just to play games, but ftp no longer functions when you go into system settings to change the theme. though, I was just installing one theme at a time, dumping, then moving on to the next. it's one of the pita things with the ps4. I think it took about an hour to dump all those themes. I was going through my sandisk connect, so I was offline. I think you can mass install themes and unlockers cuz the themes were still unlocked when I moved on to another theme, but I didn't do that. I was afraid that I'd get confused with what theme went with what. the icon0.png is in another location from the dumped theme. that's mostly what I was worried about. theme will error at install and say that it wasn't installed when it was if you leave the icon0.png out. no errors or problems with it.

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I wasn't aware that was the problem, cuz the error code isn't on psdevwiki. I think I recorded it in @KiiWii 's thread. I figured it out after I noticed that there was no image when selecting the theme. it's in the appmeta folder inside of another folder that I have no idea what it pertains to. all theme icon0.png go in that same folder. I don't know how I figured it out. I may have to add that to devwiki in case someone else has that same problem.

 

[Urbanshadow]

The only time it happened to me was in 5.05 and corrupted the application database. I had to reinstall all the games I had.

This was caused because the exploit chains were mostly based on multithreaded condition races which had to be won in order to succesfully exploit and if a race was lost the system would most likely KP. If the system KP's mid write, that sector goes bonkers.

Afaik the 6.72 is not so race dependant and should lower the chances of this by a heavy good chunk.

 

[godreborn]

The only time it happened to me was in 5.05 and corrupted the application database. I had to reinstall all the games I had.

This was caused because the exploit chains were mostly based on multithreaded condition races which had to be won in order to succesfully exploit and if a race was lost the system would most likely KP. If the systems KP's mid write, that sector goes bonkers.

should run the db backup payload after installing everything. I had an issue with final fantasy vii giving an error after booting the game yet it didn't crash. I backed up my db, then rebuilt the database and injected the app.db back. the error disappeared and all games were there without having to reinstall them. this was when I was using account activator and save mounter. now, everything works, but I don't play the system at all. lol it's just the wii u and the switch for me. I bought ys origin a couple days ago, and I already have seven hours.

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btw, that does sound like the wii u's "race attack failed," which was quite common for a time. there's also a crashing thing with the 360 and dashlaunch. it only ever happens when booting a game that's corrupted afaik. you have fatalreboot and fatalfreeze, which tells the system what to do if it encounters one of them. with that being said, I wonder if it would be possible to just have the internet browser crash instead of the system. it's been years since I've had my 360 crash from anything, and it's not related to the system specifically either, so maybe it's impossible.

 

[xdarkmario]

if you can afford and know how, replace with a SSD, its resilient against power fail. other then that rotational HDD spin head can miss align on failure

 

[Urbanshadow]

should run the db backup payload after installing everything. I had an issue with final fantasy vii giving an error after booting the game yet it didn't crash. I backed up my db, then rebuilt the database and injected the app.db back. the error disappeared and all games were there without having to reinstall them. this was when I was using account activator and save mounter. now, everything works, but I don't play the system at all. lol it's just the wii u and the switch for me. I bought ys origin a couple days ago, and I already have seven hours.

Yeah of course the db backup exists for a reason. Given we are not some psychic foresighters, most likely the db corruption hits you unexpectedly and if you didn't backup just in case then you done. So guys, backup your DB every time you install something.

btw, that does sound like the wii u's "race attack failed," which was quite common for a time. there's also a crashing thing with the 360 and dashlaunch. it only ever happens when booting a game that's corrupted afaik. you have fatalreboot and fatalfreeze, which tells the system what to do if it encounters one of them. with that being said, I wonder if it would be possible to just have the internet browser crash instead of the system. it's been years since I've had my 360 crash from anything, and it's not related to the system specifically either, so maybe it's impossible.

Wellp, a race condition is a race condition no matter the system. They exist in PC also. If something goes a little bit out of sync, something takes a little longer/a little less... the system may not be in the state the hackers code expects it and still patch it. Unconsistent state to undefined behaviour to most likely a crash somewhere or severe unstability.

To the OP: Another option is to move to local cached instead of ESP hosted as I don't believe is that stable enough or at least not at the same level.

 

[godreborn]

I'm not sure if you have an external hdd, op, but it will scan that as well with a kp. the thing that kinda sucks about an internal hdd is the 9.5mm limit. it's supposed to accommodate 8TBs I think, but I think the biggest 9.5mm drive is 2TBs unless you dremel through the shielding or get one of those nyko things to replace the bay cover. it looks kinda ugly that way though. I just bought a 5TB, thinking it would save time, but it doesn't due to scanning two drives now. lol

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kinda curious why the games going missing even happens when it doesn't appear to happen on the vita, at least to my knowledge. the same lead engineer designed both systems too, and they both have an app.db. I would think maybe vpk files would be lost, since they're not encrypted, only compressed.

 

[ItsmeAJ]

if you can afford and know how, replace with a SSD, its resilient against power fail. other then that rotational HDD spin head can miss align on failure

thanks man, I already replaced the failed one with an 500gb ssd, wanted to buy 1tb ssd to have same capacity like the failed drive was too expensive at the time.

To the OP: Another option is to move to local cached instead of ESP hosted as I don't believe is that stable enough or at least not at the same level.

yeah, I'm currently using leeful v6 exploit host because it has best stability for my ps4, I have best luck with this. Using esp8266 was another option to test various exploit hosts when the 6.72 jb was young and too much kernel panic to stand.

I'm not sure if you have an external hdd, op, but it will scan that as well with a kp. the thing that kinda sucks about an internal hdd is the 9.5mm limit.

I don't use external hdd to install pkg, only a few games I play so that fit into the 500gb drive well.

 

[godreborn]

thanks man, I already replaced the failed one with an 500gb ssd, wanted to buy 1tb ssd to have same capacity like the failed drive was too expensive at the time.



yeah, I'm currently using leeful v6 exploit host because it has best stability for my ps4, I have best luck with this. Using esp8266 was another option to test various exploit hosts when the 6.72 jb was young and too much kernel panic to stand.



I don't use external hdd to install pkg, only a few games I play so that fits the 500gb drive well.

I ran out of space on my 2TB internal. I think the biggest drive they make that doesn't need power is 5TBs. the drive I got actually says that it was made for the ps4. I bought a second one for my nvidia shield.

 

[ItsmeAJ]

I ran out of space on my 2TB internal. I think the biggest drive they make that doesn't need power is 5TBs. the drive I got actually says that it was made for the ps4. I bought a second one for my nvidia shield.

man, are you really a backup obsessionist? I've read your posts and other quoted yours here and there on gbatemp and psx-place that showing you have tons of big capacity hard drives just for your owned data backup.

 

[godreborn]

man, are you really a backup obsessionist? I've read your posts and other quoted yours here and there on gbatemp and psx-place that showing you have tons of big capacity hard drives just for your owned data backup.

yes, I lost a ps3, 360, and wii hdd somehow a while back, so it made me obsessed with backups. I have 80TBs worth of storage for backups currently. I'm backing up my favorite tv shows at this very moment.

 

[warriosbest]

overheat cpu