There’s nothing wrong with it being vertical; however it wasn’t designed to be strapped to the back of a telly.

I used to keep one of my boxes stood on its end with its power supply to the top as I was worried about the amount of heat it generated, which was significant.

The hard drive will be fine; however what isn’t recommended is to keep it in one position for a long while and then change the orientation of the drive. So if the box has been used already horizontally for a while then that could cause problems for the hard drive.

You don’t mention how it is strapped and in what position?

There are two things that jump out at me immediately, the telly could be producing a fair amount of heat in various places at the back and this will be bad for the telly and also the Humax if strapped together there, also the position, if it is strapped with the display facing up, cables down, i.e. bottom of Humax attached to back of telly then there is no where for the heat generated by the Humax to escape, the Humax has vents and a fan at the back for air circulation and if it’s pointing down then it’s not going to be doing its job.

The Humax power supply is in the left hand side of the box, if I had to strap the box then it would be to the righthand side of the telly, on its end with the power supply cable and rocker switch uppermost, front usb socket at bottom.

It’s quite difficult to imagine how the box is strapped and in what position, but if it’s a new box and after taking into consideration heat and particular air flow it shouldn’t be a problem. If it’s an old box then the change of orientation could cause problems, it’s more likely that the postitioning heat/air-flow is causing the problems though, if it’s a couple of years old then and you’ve had power cuts or pulled the mains power a few times prematurely to the box then the hard drive may have inconsistancies which can cause playback problems, in this instance watch everything or copy off to usb drive and re-format the drive, best to do a factory reset as well, although you would lose your recording schedule so make a note or take a picture with a camera phone if necessary

The fact that it’s experiencing playback problems indicates that the box isn’t happy where it currently is.

All new hard drives can be used in any position; however the manufacturers will tell you that once it’s been in a certain position for a while it will start to wear in that position. It’s a case of suck it and see unfortunately.

The box shouldn’t be used with the display facing the ceiling as there’s no where for the heat generated inside to go, it will just get hotter and hotter. There’s no problem with it on its end with the display facing forward, power top rear, usb front bottom though.

If the hard drive is playing up then it’s fairly easy to swap it for a new one up to 2TB so long as you have the latest firmware, any 3.5″ sata AV or low powered slow speed intelli-power etc. drive will do.