Unfortunately you are not alone and there are loads of unhappy humax owners out there. This happened to my box a few weeks ago. My box was brought in October 2014 from Argos but I failed to extend the warranty (to two years) with Humax as I didn’t realise you could.

I ‘phoned Humax this week and they simply said this is a known issue to do with the freetime app (you will be able to see you recordings on the app still) which somehow is messing up the Humax box. The harddrive can’t be recognised but it is fine. They said it was being investigated and they anticipate a software update to be released to fix this but they don’t know when. After he checked that my serial number hadn’t been registered for the extended warranty, I was simply told by the operator that if I wanted to record I would have to buy a new box!!

That was not an answer I was willing to accept as I only installed the app after being prompted by the box when I first set it up and have never used the app since.

I used social media to my benefit(!) and e-mailed them several times and they agreed to replace my box with a new one! Phew!

I just tweeted @humax several times to get my point across with a few screenshots of my recordings and storage “insert usb” plus a screenshot of this forum thread to highlight this is a common fault and on latter connected tweets included @which and @consumerreports when explaining that I only downloaded the app when prompted by the setup of the box. I also telephoned, and e-mailed during this period of tweeting and reached a positive ending. As the tweets are out there and easily accessible if someone is following @humax or doing a search they carry power. When I spoke, politely, on the telephone they were just dismissive and didn’t want to help, as soon as you get it out on social media you get a positive result more often than not. I hope this helps others.

Billibob – 22 minutes ago  » 

I have tried to find a Humax Facebook page with a large following to post on without much success…

Some years ago there was a Humax Facebook page that allowed user comment. They stopped it because of lots of critical comments.

texaspetey – 14 minutes ago  » 

What I would suggest for readers of this thread is to unpair your device from using the freetime app from the humax box, and delete the apps from your phone as this seems to be the problem.

No need to delete the app, it works fine just as a remote. Just unpair it.

Hi,

Just registered on the forums so I can join the queue of disgruntled Humax customers although I have managed to get my HDD running again this evening!

About 4 days ago my HDR100S suddenly stopped seeing the hard drive in the same way others on this thread have reported.

I bought a new WD 1TB HDD today and installed it but still the box could not see the new drive. At this point, frustrated and fed up, I found this forum and read all the posts – having already tried most of the suggestions of the older posts, I put back the original HDD and was about to delete my internet connection and power down as mentioned in a couple of the more recent posts but prior to doing so, I unpaired the two associated devices I had from the box and left it for about half an hour. I then went back to settings and noted that under storage it could now see my HDD and instead of saying less than 1% was used, it showed 36% but although I could see the recorded programs in the guide, they would not play! I then went back to settings and restored the factory defaults which has miraculously brought everything back again to the point we can watch all the saved programs and use live pause etc!

It’s only been a few hours so not sure if this is a permanent fix but will live in hope and maybe it will help others!!!

Hello all. Sorry for my first post to be a moan. I too am currently facing issues with lost recordings. As the issue could be caused my a number of failures I’m working my way through the options.

A few nights ago, halfway through watching a recording the box came up with an error message “unsupported file type”. It still listed all the recording about 70% but showed 1% use.

I swapped the harddisk and did a reset, still the same. The I saw the stuff on here about the app. I replaced the original Harddisk back into the unit and looked at the paired devices. There was a name in the list that was not known to me. Is this the original owner, as my box was a warranty replacement? Or has my box been hacked?

I left the box unplugged for about an hour and it is still the same. I’m going to leave it for 24 hours and see if that works, though I’m not sure what leaving it unplugged actually does?

Failing that, it must be some other hardware issue. Disk controller or PSU?

This is the second time I’ve had a failure in 3 years and I’m not keen to spend another £200 on something that won’t last more than about 15 months.

Hi Dino617

Yes I did unpair the attached device. I don’t think I had ever used the APP as the name of the device was a persons name. I’m thinking it was the original owner, as this box was a warranty replacement. Factory default does not remove the pair list which I think is wrong!

I’ve now tried connecting a HDD via USB. It can see it, and will let me format it. But I can’t record anything.