smiffy12 – 19 mins ago  » 

This Humax box has been pretty much on constantly, recording and used daily for over 2.5 years now. The WD red 2TB drive has been flawless (touch wood it remains that way) and I am so pleased I did this upgrade.

Thanks that is interesting.

The only slight niggle with the 4000 is that the picture quality isn’t fantastic (but that doesn’t really matter)

Picture quality here is good; have you experimented with different Resolution settings (I use 1080p) and checked that the TV isn’t doing any image processing on the input from the HDMI port used by the Humax?

Do a factory reset and format the drive at the same time.

Hi, me again, I did the factory reset and did the format option and I have also put a new !TB in the box then did the factory reset with format and the result is that I tell it to record and it seems to be recording but on going into the recordings list All the programs I told it to record are there but on playing I just get the line down below that tells you what has been played and the length.

No video plays and the time line reads 0.00 at the end and a message comes up saying “cannot support this video file due to invalid file format‘

The drive was formatted NTFS before the Factory reset with format and the drive was new with Seatools reporting zero hours run. it is a Seagate Barracuda 7200I dont’ know if a 7200 RPM drive is suitable for the Humax?

I also tried another drive which is a second hand one but passes the Seatools Smart and Long generic test, so I would doubt if it is the drive it is obviously being detected and the recordings list shows but all six I have tried recording give me the message above

Incidentally, I have just restored the original drive with 804 recordings and all play back as they should.

Any further advice you can give would be much appreciated

Hi Mactoshb,

Barracuda is for computers it’s overkill for video its also unnecessarily expensive but should be more than capable (Is it 2Tb or under?). The rpm shouldn’t make any difference just might make it noisier. Sounds like you did the format outside of the PVR, *** the idea was to let the PVR do the format theres an option in settings storage.

When I did mine with a new Skyhawk drive I tried doing the format which failed after about 5 seconds of thinking about it. Then I found it didn’t seem to need formatting and its been ok for a year now.

Anyway suggest let PVR do the format.

Good luck.

mactoshb – 2 hours ago  » 

Sorry. until now I missed your question asking which drive it was “Seagate Barracuda 7200” is the answer I do not know if a 7200 drive is suitable

I would have expected it to work although it isn’t optimised for PVR usage which might result in stuttering on playback if there are any marginal sectors. Can you give the exact full model number please (should be on the label on the hard drive) just so that I can check it isn’t some unusual variant that isn’t compatible with the Humax?

SSThing – 28 mins ago  » 

Could it be anything to with the jumpers being in the wrong place?

Without knowing the exact drive model it is hard to be sure; the only jumper that is documented for the Barracuda 7200.12 Serial ATA limits the SATA speed to 1.5 Gb/s so if there is a jumper fitted it might be worth trying it without a jumper.

mactoshb – 28 mins ago  » 

The drive was formatted (Assuming the command was carried out) bythe machine I told it to format and it took no time at all to come up as done and I mean one second or so,s so I have my doubts it did anything.

I think all the format command does is setup the filesystem (it doesn’t do any sector by sector checks) but one second does sound a bit too quick.

The model number is Seagate ST31000524A P/N -521 F/W JC4A9YP194S

I think there should be an additional 6 characters between “P/N” and “-521”?