HDD free space not recognised

[KeithWilcox]

We bought a Sony RDR-HXD890 DVD recorder a few years ago, and it has been brilliant...

Until last night. Whilst tidying up the internal HDD, the HDD forgot that it had several hours of free space. It is still possible to dub from HDD to DVD, infact apart from the consequences of a "full" HDD, the recorder seems to be otherwise OK.

Cycling the power to the DVD recorder has not resolved the problem, neither has the built-in repair function.

Is there any way of carrying out some sort of equivalent to SCANDISK or CHKDSK? At the moment, I can't even find a way of re-formatting the HDD (once I've dubbed everything I can to DVD).

Thanks in advance,

Keith

[rooobb]

I didn't understand what you mena by "forgot" free space and "tidying up" the HDD (probably due to my bad english :smileyhappy:). Were you deleting some recording and at the end you've got a full disk message? Did you get some power shortage during the operation?

You have the possibility to format the HDD if there is an error in it, it seems that your recorder doesn't recognize this situation as an HDD error. You may format it in any case, but using the service menu and it's quite complex (you need a specific remote for it).

You may want to try to optimize the HDD or try a reset to factory setting in the mean time.

[KeithWilcox]

Thankyou for your reply. I'm a PC tech by trade, so I'll try to use less PC jargon and better English...

By tidying up the HDD, I mean a combination of removing the adverts from TV programmes, dubbing to DVD the programmes that we want to keep, then removing these and anything we no longer want from the hard disk.

Unfortunately, there's a lot to go through - we had got up to approx 9 hours of free space, then at the end of removing adverts from the next programme, the free space was then reported to be zero. There was no obvious power shortage during this time.

The DVD recorder has recommended optimisation several times, but as the free space is reported as zero, this fails fairly quickly.

As a matter of interest, would the "reset to factory setting" erase the current contents of the HDD?

[rooobb]

Don't worry about the language, I was not sure about what you were doing on the recorder. It's something that it's normally supported by the HXD without any problem, tough I've seen in the past in some forum that, when the space is very low, may occure some problem in managing the remaining space correctly (so in the future avoid to have this kind of situation, I keep normally at least 15 h in SP free on mine HXD870).

Regarding the reset, you'll not lose any recording, just the setting will be lost (i.e. video format, hdmi setting and all the timer you have already set).

[KeithWilcox]

Thankyou for the continued help. I've found and run the initial setup (in the System Menu) - and it has made no difference to the mis-reporting of the amount of space left on the Hard Disk. Is this the "reset to factory setting"? Or have I yet to find this?

If only there was an easy way to get the Hard Disk to check itself - or perform a more thorough test...

[rooobb]

The factory reset is done by pressing the STOP an POWEROFF button on the deck. Be sure you don't have a disk in the tray before and afterword unplug the unit from power for 1/2 minutes.

When you plug in the unit and switch it on you'll have to go through the easy setup procedure.

I'm not sure it helps, but in this way you delete any wrong information in the memory of the recorder. if it is something written in the HDD it will stay there.

Should it not work, the only solution you have is to get a remote enabled for service menu (the Harmony ones can be programmed for that) or bring it to an service center.