I have had my Thomson DTI6300-16 box for nearly a year now and was fairly happy with it until the new s/w (2.93)was pushed.
Since then, I have had to power-cycle the box about every 3 days but I've been living with this in the hope that later s/w upgrades would fix this.

However, after last night's power-cycle I found I had no content in the library. Something like 60 hours of content acquired over nearly a year, gone down the pan.
I phoned up and the guy said a tech will call me back but I don't hold much hope of recovery.
It says the disk is 23% free so I reckon it's still there but inaccessible.

Anyone have any ideas about trying to recover this before I take a hammer to it ?

Did you try another power cycle?

one of the many problems I had with mine, before I returned it.

Power down, wait a few minutes then power up - you should then have everything back.

I suspect your epg went blank as well?

Thanks for the responses.
I've just tried a couple of power-cycles but it's still the same
I'll see if the 'tech' that is supposed to get back to me, does and take it from there.
I don't want to reset the hard-disk just yet but I'll give it until the w/e to see if there's some solution.
I suppose it's not the end of the world but it does bring it home that there is no way to archive stuff unless you remove the disk and grab the streams (trp files !?).
It's a pity the USB port doesn't work.

Up to yesterday I've been pleased with the box.

It's not even recording programmes now.
I think it's a disk format and take it from there.

I'll probably end up putting the 160G disk in a caddy and buying a Humax.

It's a shame as I used to work for ST ( subsidiary of Thomsom ).

Shit happens eh !

In that case you should have been aware that thomson products are not the best (to say the least)

Apart from the dual standard widescreen TV my parents have had for 10 years....seems pretty reliable so far.

I found the box and receipt so I'll take it back as it's less than 12 months old.

I'm coming to the conclusion that it could be a disk problem but I don't want to take it apart to re-seat cables etc as it will void the warranty.

I think I'll go for a PVR where I can archive stuff to USB or DVD. Will probably have to pay a bit more though but the flexibility, for me, should be worth it.

Time to peruse the rest of these forums and see other peoples recommendations/comments about other PVRs.

Hope the s/w etc. does get sorted as, apart from this problem, it's been a good box up to now.

as i say with pc stuff how can a solid cable move in a sealed box?,the ide cables in these boxes are firmly in place,no chance of it moving.
The ide cable in my box was lodged very tightly in the connection as yours will be too,you need force to move it out again.
Unless the cables take on a human form they can't dislodge themselves.
apart from the ide to the hard drive there is a plastic molex solidly plugged in the hard drive,the chance of either of these connections moving by themselves is pretty much zero.

I haven't seen an IDE cable crawl out of its socket, but I have seen a SATA cable do exactly that, resulting in most peculiar intermittent failures on a PC that took me a while to get to the bottom of. I eventually attributed this to a combination of thermal creep and vibration from the drive, and fixed it by replacing the cable with a latching one.

However, a connector that has physically moved isn't the only reason you might need to reseat it. One or more of the electrical contacts may have deteriorated resulting in an intermittent or high resistance connection. Moving it can re-establish a good contact between the two surfaces.

[I'm not saying this has any bearing on this particular problem].

And the TV/DVD combo that I've had for at least 5 faultless years, plus three DHD4000s (one for us, one for my father and one for my father in law) which are pretty damned near perfect.

The latest stuff doesn't seem to be doing the trick, but don't write off all of their stuff.

Matt

The IDE cable re-seat was just a guess as I didn't want to open the box. As it couldn't record it may well have been the HD failing . I'm also thinking it may be something to do with the power-cycling: I could have interrupted the power when some process was accessing the disk and this corrupted the filesystem.

I reckoned I could have recovered with taking it apart and putting in another disk but, as it was 10 months old, I decided to take it back under warranty.

I have a Humax being delivered tomorrow so we'll see how this goes. At least I will be able to archive via USB so I won't lose everything again.

there is a big difference between a sata and an ide cable,a sata can slip out quite easily with minimal touch.

to the oriignal poster
Although no one is mentioning it i think there were plenty of us who had to disconnect the box on the same day as you,i definetely had to,i didn't lose my library content but the whole box locked up like yours on the same days as yours.

I've also had to unplug the box around three times since the latest firmware download,same as you.