I had a failed recording on the HDR today as follows:

Was watching an existing recording and paused it to do something else temporarily. Humax screen saver cut in as normal.

When I came back it was showing live TV. Investigating, a recording had attempted to start (Country Tracks BBC1). This was shown in the media list as having failed for an unknown reason, only had the option to delete. When I went back to the original recording I was watching, on resuming, it had forgotten where it had been paused, and defaulted back to the start.

I'm assuming the box probably crashed and re-booted, possibly another crash event; there was a recent thread about crashes since .17 firmware.

Anyone have any ideas?

Not much help to you, but I would suspect that holding a position in a recording, and starting a further recording, is a bit of a struggle on the operating system. I say this because I find should I be setting a record program in the guide, as a different recording starts, it just takes me back to live tv without setting the recording. My personal choice is to stop playback, and restart with resume playing from the selection, rather than pause tv

Thanks, however I've done this many, many, times over the 2 years plus I've had the box with no previous problems. Probably just a one off?

It was just a thought, but not being a method I use very often I bow to your experience. As you say probably a one off