Lots of people complain about the POHD recurrently asking to format the HDD.
Others find errors when connecting to a PC via USB...

STEP 0: Understand POHD formatting:
The POHD disk needs to show something like:

when you issue a

these Start and End values are not the default ones, as I've done some tweaking. It's the type and ordering of the partitions that matter.
/dev/sda1 is, by default, the NTFS partition (whole disk, less the following two partitions). It's labeled partition1
/dev/sda2 is, by default, a linux swap partition of around 157MB. No label
/dev/sda2 is, by default, a linux ext3 partition of around 157MB. No label
All of these are primary partitions, and the POHD tries to mount them in this order upon boot.

STEP 1: Try to repair, without (hopefully) loosing all your data:
NTFS: Connect the POHD to a Windows PC (tested with good results on a Windows 7 machine). If it asks to run chkdsk, do so, otherwise, you can run it yoursefl (right-click, properties, tools, check). Make sure you select the checkbox to fix the filesystem errors, or it does nothing.
SWAP: Nothing to be done
EXT3: telnet to POHD and run:

you can do the same from a linux PC, but the paths vary.
Make sure you don't run fsck on a mounted file system!

STEP 2: Reformat your Harddisk:
Select that option in the menu.
Alternatively, in case you want to tweak partition sizes:
a. Connect your disk to a windows PC, clean the disk, and create a NTFS primary partition. Name it partition1.
b. Connect to a Linux PC and create a second partition, Linux Swap, equal or bigger than 157MB
c. Connect to a Linux PC and create a third partition, Linux ext3, equal or bigger than 157MB

STEP 3: Get real: For stability, if your firmware allows:
your NTFS partition gets to be as small as possible (16MB)
your ext3 partition needs to be bigger, something around 512MB will do
create a fourth ext3 partition as big as possible
search the forum for ways to mount this ext3 partition on boot, tricking the POHD into thinking it's the default one. You'll need a suitable firmware.

Jr

Thanks for your post. Now I know how to troubleshoot my HDD.