Hi,

I turned off the power to our DHD4000 on Saturday. Turned it back on Sunday all that happened was an orange light and a clicking noise (like something trying to turn over and failing). My suspicion is that the hard drive has given up. Are the symptoms consistent?

I've disassembled the machine, cleaned out the fan and I'm ready to purchase a replacement. Unfortunately, the posts I've seen for doing this are quite dated. Is it still possible to do or has the hardware moved on so that a current hard drives are incompatible?

I've seen this...

http://www.dabs.com/products/seagate...52750000-50410

I'm aware it won't be used to the full capacity but it is a Seagate (a like-for-like swap) and spins at 5400. is is a reasonable choice?

Also, could anyone recommend a fan as I'd look to replace that at the same time.

Any help would be much appreciated!

The direct answer is that yes you should be able to simply slot a replacement drive into the DHD4000 and "away you go"

A slightly longer answer though is that you should be cautious of whether you have really got a dead HD and not issues with capacitors and power supply.

If you search you'll see a number of threads (some quite lengthy) on just this topic.

Given that the EPG is now dead on this box you may want to consider looking at a replacement rather than an fix.

Kingers

I agree that the PSU is another possibility that shouldn't be overlooked. Can you try the HDD in a PC first? You won't be able to see any data on it, but you should get an idea of whether the HDD will spin up or not. If it does in the PC then its the DHD4000 PSu that needs attention.

Pop

Hi,

I'd not thought about the PSU, I'll research some threads.
Unfortunately I no longer have a desktop machine I could plug the drive into but I'm sure I can find one locally.

My wife loves the DHD4000. We're using a spare Digifusion box as a stop-gap but miss twin tuners and chase play.
I'm sure there are threads on 'what makes a good current freeview PVR' and I will look at them but I'd rather fix the current machine given that my TV is a 21" Ferguson CRT inherited from my Grandfather! One day we'll go flat and HD...

Many thanks for your swift and helpful responses.

Orange led and continuous clicking of drive (never quite reaching bootup) indicates a worn out power supply.

Switching off the electricity as you did, allows the dodgy capacitors to cool down, altering their values. At next power on, the capacitors cannot hold enough charge to power the disk.

It happened to one of my machines.