Nic,

Not much you can do yourself without opening the machine up.

Most likely the disk has failed – it might just be a cable loose or a power problem – unlikely though. Worst case is a problem on the HDR’s internal board, though they are rarely, if ever, reported.

If you’ve got a two year warranty, then that’s the way to go. Otherwise you can replace the disk yourself. Easy enough job. There’s plenty of posts on how to do it and recommendations for replacement disks.

Dino.

I get this too so would be interested to hear if you fixed it. I bought a new HDD, installed it, formatted it and all appeared fine – I could record, pause and rewind TV etc., but after setting up a few recordings for the evening I checked the next day and the same ‘HDD not available’ message had re-appeared. Sent the HDD back for replacement but the same thing has happened with the new disc. It installs and formats ok and all looks well until the next day – all I can think of is that something happens to the HDD when the unit goes into standby overnight and is restarted the next day. Back to square one with no recording and no HDD accessible from the menu. I’ve tried formatting the HDD from the hidden menu, which doesn’t work. I can select the option but nothing happens – not even an error message to work on.

daved1965 – the disk is a low power AV drive?

daved1965 – 7 minutes ago  » 

Both 1tb drives. One of these – WD Caviar Green 1TB SATA III 6GB/s Internal Hard Drive 3.5 inch, from Amazon. A reviewer had used one in Humax box and it worked fine so thought I’d be ok.

The WD models suitable for pvr use are models AV-GP

http://www.wdc.com/en/products/products.aspx?id=150

Thank for your all these earlier posts. I have a very similar problem.

I’ve installed a new Harddisk to my Humax Foxsat HDR.

It is a WD AV 2TB 3.5″ SATA Media Hard Drive.(WD AV-GP SATA hard drive)

Its power consumption is very low at 4.50 Watts. Full spec here:

http://www.ebuyer.com/524859-wd-av-2tb-3-5-sata-media-hard-drive-wd20eurx

What I did:

I partitioned the drive and formatted it as per Raydon’s instructions in his wonderful web interface (humaxbox>documentation>FAQ>Upgrading/Replacing the Hard Disk> Installing Drives Exceeding 1TB)

My problem:

When I first installed the new HD and powered the device I was able to watch live TV, but the error “HDD not available Check HDD” was observed.

On the 3rd reboot of the device this error went away and I was able to watch my recorded TV and access the HD as expected.

Randomly, I still get the “HDD not available Check HDD” error, but not everyday. To ‘resolve’ the error, I just reboot the device (off/on with the remote) and 99% of the time, I don’t get the problem in the second boot.

It seems to happen more when the device hasn’t been in use for a good number of hours. I’ve not been able to find a repeatable pattern or set of circumstances I get this error.

I checked, re-checked, and triple checked for any lose connections that I might had made whilst swapped the HD.

I thought it would be a power problem, but there’s no lose connections. I’m happy the drive itself is 100% fine ‘in itself’. But I question if the drive I bought is right for the Humax. It is a WD AV-GP drive, so it should be fine and the power requirement is low. I can’t tell if my new HD has a higher or lower power requirement than the original.

Any suggestions are more than welcome.

Thanks, Matthew

Many thanks Graham. Don’t suppose you know where I can get a ‘jumper’ from?

Thanks again, Matthew

Many thanks Graham. I’ve asked ebuyer and also WD to send me one. If they don’t, I’m so pleased you mentioned Maplin. hadn’t thought of them. Thanks again, Matthew