Hi, mactoshb again, the drive is new and came in a sealed antistatic envelope from a dealer on eBay—-I have recorded about ten full programs, the red”R”button works every time and they all get listed as usual under Recordings and on pressing the highlighted recording the screen goes black with only the timeline on the bottom with the times all showing 0.00. On attempting to play, instead of playing I get the message about the wrong file, I nearly forgot, there is no visible reaction to the red R button either in the guide or when playing a liveprogram on the 4000 not even a blink.

Boyd

Some posts out there about a stopped clock, check the clock is ok and working.

Since writing the above I have received a new Seagate Constellation ES 2TB with the date stamp of 12062, which I think translates as manufactured in 2012 it is 7200 RPM

It was restored to factory settings and told to format the drive in the process

IT exhibits exactly the same behavior as the other two drives on being installed in my 4000, namely it seems to accept recordings and they are properly listed under “Recordings”, but on being instructed to play says it cannot play as the video file is the wrong format, but all recordings get listed in the appropriate section and can be deleted from there as normal.

I checked the format of the new disk it came as a NTFS and MBR but after being in the machine it then came out as unallocated and as not a MBR but as a GPT if any of that makes any difference, the machine must do that but it seems to take no time at all to do the format and the new one was also formatted in the machine (Or instructed to from the settings for factory reset

To Post I will just add that when I stick the original 1TB drive in the 4000 it works as normal, recording, playback etc all as normal.By the way if the question regarding the clock is the visible time on screen then it is working as normal and is automatically set on setup both with the original disk and the Nnew ones and I have now tried three Two 2TB and one 1TB, when I first posted I was expecting a quick fix for something I was doing wrong but not so quick, Surely I am not the first to come up with a similar problem

Thanks, Boyd

I do see what you mean, but the drives have been hooked up to Seatools for Windows and it shows them as having run for zero hours, but I suppose that it is possible to fake that too

Thanks for the reply, Boyd

It should be possible to do a format with 0 fill, ie it writes zeros to blank everything out. It would take many minutes to do it but verify the drive is fully writable and hasn’t had a head crash in some enterprise computer system somewhere.

As I understand it the recording header info gets written to NVRAM and clearly works as you can see the recordings, the actual recording occurs or not on the HDD.

Have a look at what’s on the suspect drive after recording.

2012 is ancient, drives don’t hang around on shelves, odds on its been swapped out of a server somewhere upon failure.

Seagate Skyhawk, 4TB, Video Internal Hard Drive, 3.5

My brother has just bought the above for his FVP500, any comments regarding its suitability woud be appreciated,

Boyd

Sorry to bore every one by returning to this. I have just received a new Seagate 2Tb Skyhawk NOT bought on Ebay and the date of manufacture is printed on the label and is FEB 2021 and have just put it in my FVp4000 and it behaves exactly as all the drives I have tried, the new one was formatted by the machine, when I did a factory reset with format the HD, once again it went on to the next stage very quickly and I wonder if it did the format. I get the same result as before, It seems to accept the command to record and the recordings show in the recordings list, but when I try to play I get the message seen in the attached file number 1 "cannot support this video file due to invalid file format".

You will see in the snip of original working drive the Minitools Partition Manager readout says that the that the readout for the original Drive format is listed as hmx_int_stor_ext4 and if you look at the readout from Minitools on the new drive (After formatting in FVP4000.) is unallocated. I don’t doubt that is something to do with my problem, I need to find out how to get it formatted correctly. The formatting in the machine does not seem to have happened.

Incidentally the original drive on being reinserted to the FVP 4000 carries on working as if it was never out.

I did notice that telling the machine to format during setup it warned me that all recordings and settings including scheduled recording would be deleted and from previous posts it seems that the schedule is not on the H/D but in the NVRAM (Just mentioning that as I have no idea if that can be anything to do with anything.)

As I say I am sorry too bring this up again, but not only have I got an expensive drive that is effectively useless to me but my brother has exactly the same problem as I told him to get a 2TB also as a result of the forums saying there was no problem.

I will attach the photos and send now and hope someone has a lightbulb moment and can answer my problemI have also attached the photo of the label on the new drive and the date of manufacture is printed in clear on the bottom right hand

Boyd (mactoshb)

[attachment=92740,2103] [attachment=92740,2104] [attachment=92740,2105] [attachment=92740,2106]

If you put the original drive back in and perform a hdd format, does it complete and work?

If you then reformat that drive in another device, can you then put it back in the Humax and reformat successfully?

Have you tried reinstalling the Humax firmware just in case it has become corrupt?