HR10-250 Trouble Symptom Question

[MoInSTL]

Got the 10-250 little less than 3 months ago. I was recording & watching various programs night before last and went to watch Law & Order. When I hit play instead of playing, it sat on the Now Playing Screen (green background) minus the Now Playing list. When I tried to FF it, it played garbled audio. When fast forwarding there is normally no sound. It reminded me how a VCR sounds when it's FF. Since the program was still being recorded I switched to watching it live and tried rewinding it. It did okay until the corrupted spot and displayed a fixed scene from a commercial and rather than rewind it zipped right to the beginning. I rebooted and tried a couple of more times. Remote was not working well either, another symptom. Everything before and since is fine. I have not come across this issue in any of my DVRs.

Since it is less than 6 months old a new unit has been shipped. The tier two tech I spoke with said to reformat the drive before I start using the new one. My only fear is how it is handled during shipping. She said that's why I need to format it first.

Is it worth running the clear & delete everything beforehand?

Thanks in advance!

[stevel]

I don't know what she meant by "format" - that isn't meaningful here. If the drive is physically damaged during shipment, no amount of formatting will help. Don't do a c+de - just use the new box and see how it works for you.

[MoInSTL]

I don't know what she meant by "format" - that isn't meaningful here. If the drive is physically damaged during shipment, no amount of formatting will help. Don't do a c+de - just use the new box and see how it works for you.

Thanks for the reply. She also said the replacement would be new since mine is only 9 weeks old. Turns out I may get a refurb. I have been very pleased with D* for 4.5 years until learning a refurb may be in my future for a 9 week old owned box. Customer Retention wouldn't budge on a new one

The tier two tech I spoke with also said her neighbors were deleting her programs and turning her dish at night and she keeps her DVR under her bed. Surprised such a nut case is still working there. This what not a pleasant experience!

Edit: I know no date on the back is the newer unit, so how can I tell if it's new or refurbished?

Supposedly a clear and delete reformats it.

[stevel]

Clear and Delete does not "reformat". It does recreate some of the file system. I see no point in doing that unless you're already experiencing problems.

The only way I can think of to possibly tell if it's a refurb is to open it up and look for stickers on the disk drive or board.

[MoInSTL]

Clear and Delete does not "reformat". It does recreate some of the file system. I see no point in doing that unless you're already experiencing problems.

The only way I can think of to possibly tell if it's a refurb is to open it up and look for stickers on the disk drive or board.

Gotcha. That makes sense.

Thanks again.

[TyroneShoes]

Refurb isn't necessarily a bad thing. In fact, (having worked in the Zenith factory at one time) I think a refurb is probably checked out much more carefully than a typical piece off of an assembly line, and there is less of a chance of further infantile failure. A refurb does not have the cachet of "new" or "single owner", but that is an aesthetic that really probably doesn't impact reliability.

Any worry about bad handling during shipping is also probably not that warranted. It would have to be handled particularly bad to cause a HDD problem. Only when the platters are spinning is it really important to not move a HDD, and even that precaution is not as necessary as HDD technology moves into the laptop-predominant era. I guess theoretically a sharp drop could cause a new bad sector on a boxed HR10, but not likely. C&D does not sector out bad areas as a format will, it only removes all content data from the cataloging (a fresh start) so that if there was a previous cataloging error, it will automatically become irrelevant.