Hi we've had 9 years faithful service from our Humax apart from it getting stuck about 3 years ago possibly in a deleting loop(I can't recall) but it was fixed and the hard disk formatted by a local tv repair shop. Since then it has worked fine except I have noticed that as free space approaches around 50GB glitches might appear in recordings or the machine might freeze altogether(perhaps when being asked to record 2 channels at once or watching and recording at the same time) but return to normal after being switched off at the mains. This didn't seem to happen if I didn't let the free space get lower than say 80 to 100GB. I don't know if this is a sign of one particular patch of the disk being damaged or 'corrupted'?
Anyway, very foolishly, I let the free space decline to 50 and maybe a bit less and it went into a deleting loop, I could still change channels maybe watch recordings I can't recall but not record or pause live tv or even access the menu but again I'm not sure now sorry. Turning it off and on again didn't make any difference. I decided to try leaving it off overnight (might have seen that mentioned somewhere on the web) and was surprised the next morning to find it come on without the deleting loop- but it still wouldn't let me record and possibly wouldn't let me access media. But I was pleased to discover that I could access the menu and the format disk option under the factory default option so I thought this could save me time and money I would lose all my recordings but never mind. 'Processing' appeared on the screen but I didn't hear any of the expected crunching sounds from the hard disk and after about 3 hours after much checking in the meantime I discovered the machine in standby. Now I can still watch tv with it but it still won't record and now pressing media does nothing. On the menu tree the data storage and recording settings are greyed out. I've done the formatting thing twice more just in case to no avail.
I took it to the same local tv repair shop but after trying and failing to fix it he said it must be a problem with the motherboard or firmware. So I would greatly appreciate any advice? Is it worth getting it to Richer Sounds which we bought it from or another tv repair place or even a computer repair shop? Or does it's age and possible damage to the disk mean it would need a new disk but I wouldn't know which disk to buy and wouldn't want to buy one and find that didn't fix the problem. I've found the hummy.tv site and was intrigued by the custom firmware option but it wouldn't let me download the latest version of said firmware and I have no experience of using linux and Telnet and would have to buy something to get the Humax on the internet so am wary of this route. Any advice would be much appreciated, is it time to get a new one? Thank you for any help.
