Last night, my Mum was more or less upset (not literally) as the PVR she received from us as a christmas present erased lots of un-watched to watched programmes due to the electricity going out. I'm not sure on what PVR she has though I know it's the Digihome one hence why i'm posting in this sub-forum but is there any way to prevent this from happening and should we take the product back to get it replaced?

I suppose it's pointless asking if I can retrieve the deleted files because it's impossible ..... isn't it ?

Firstly, which version of the software is the PVR running?

Was the PVR in use when the power cut happened? If so, recording and/or playback? Just interested to know because if this happened with a recent software version, I'll flag it as issue for Vestel (the makers of the Digihome) to investigate. That said, I've never had such a problem, and still even have a test recording on my box which I made in August - probably I've had about 2 power cuts since then.

There may be a way to recover recordings (see filesytem thread), and it may also be worth trying rebooting the PVR (hold power button for 5 seconds) to see if another disk check will fix things.

Sorry for the late post...

It's a PVR80 and the PVR wasn't recording or in playback mode at the time it was just switched on (not standby).
Having looked at the filesystem thread, I may go about removing the hard-drive and see what appears when it's on the pc. Thanks for info.

The PVR's version is V.5.3 ..
Last edited by east_boy_16 : 11-03-2007 at 20:54

Weird, so presumably the HD wasn't even spinning. I could perhaps understand it if things went wrong if the power cut happened while the PVR was writing something important, but I would hope there are safeguards against that anyway. AFAIK, all recording information is soley HD based, so I'm at a loss to explain how the recordings disappeared when the HD wasn't even running, unless of course the power went off, then on for a split second, and back off again at startup time or in the disk check. Some testing for a rainy day it seems

BTW, I'm assuming all recordings were wiped?

not all recordings were wiped .. some were

Short post .. you will need mor detail lol. I was on the phone at the time I typed that last message.

Anywho, recent recordings were lost i.e. Top Gear, CSI etc and as you say the HD must not have been spinning at the time. The funny thing is - it wasn't a power cut - something tripped the electrics for plug sockets so the fuse box switched that fuse off (obviously) and when switching the fuse back on and after the PVR had done a disk check .. mum checked her recordings and told me that half of them had been lost. Although the day before the PVR was recording The Rockford Files on ITV3 and Lovejoy later on but cut out half of TRF and replaced it with Lovejoy yet the existing Lovejoy file was still on disk.

I'll have a look at the PVR this weekend and see whether I can retrieve the lost files and may back all of the PVR up. Am tempted to get Mum to take it back and get a replacement. Will see how it goes.

Strange. Maybe the folks looking into the hdd structure may be able to offer some insight as to how some files could disappear. Presumably a reboot, and subsequent disk check might pick up the lost recordings (assuming nothing has been recorded since).

I'm not so sure a replacement will help - the V1.0 twin record software is old and buggy, and AFAIK there are no products out there which came installed with the V1.0 software, and there are good reasons for that . It isn't "supposed" to be used on the Digihomes - the V5.3 single record software is much more stable and refined.