I wish to thank BH and several others I've not remembered the names of for the guidance I found here in rescuing my HDR-Fox T2.
My problem was the box suddenly went into the cycle of not completing a boot, no warning.
It took me a while eliminating possibilities, including tidying up a few iffy solder points on the hotter items in the PSU, but this seemed OK as the volts were steady and correct.
However, I verified it worked as a tuner with no leads connected to the HDD, and I also verified the fan worked if given 12V from my bench supply.
It even didn't crash if just the power lead was connected to HDD. But restarting with the SATA lead forced the re-boot cycle.
I flushed it, and upgraded hdf from .12 to .13, but still tuner only.
I bought a new 2TB Seagate (the third HDD for this box), and to start with it was the same, OK with power and I could just hear the HDD but only if no SATA.
However, one of the posts (I think on this forum) suggested plugging in the SATA lead once powered up and working as tuner. Risky, but on a blank drive I've nothing to lose but a drive, no data, and if the box is dead, it's dead.
Bingo.
I was able to format the new HDD, test it, and record a program to it just now, play it back and erase it, as well do some time shifting.
It is now doing a soak test for the next day or so.
The old HDD is now in a self-powered caddy, and the HDR-Fox can read it happily via the USB, so nothing lost.
The only commonality between this crash and one about four years ago on the original HDD from 2012 was I had been doing quite a lot of housekeeping, making space. I assume the directory structure became corrupted in each case by just enough that the cpu could not resolve it. However the caddy tends to fiddle around a bit with this and showed a couple of damaged files on the original HDD, but I've not found any on the most recent HDD (no 2).
I will add a small 12V 40mm Sunon inside the box to stir the air in the direction of the hot bits to reduce local heating.
Thanks again to this community for your help.
Still learning where everything goes on the forum.
My problem was the box suddenly went into the cycle of not completing a boot, no warning.
It took me a while eliminating possibilities, including tidying up a few iffy solder points on the hotter items in the PSU, but this seemed OK as the volts were steady and correct.
However, I verified it worked as a tuner with no leads connected to the HDD, and I also verified the fan worked if given 12V from my bench supply.
It even didn't crash if just the power lead was connected to HDD. But restarting with the SATA lead forced the re-boot cycle.
I flushed it, and upgraded hdf from .12 to .13, but still tuner only.
I bought a new 2TB Seagate (the third HDD for this box), and to start with it was the same, OK with power and I could just hear the HDD but only if no SATA.
However, one of the posts (I think on this forum) suggested plugging in the SATA lead once powered up and working as tuner. Risky, but on a blank drive I've nothing to lose but a drive, no data, and if the box is dead, it's dead.
Bingo.
I was able to format the new HDD, test it, and record a program to it just now, play it back and erase it, as well do some time shifting.
It is now doing a soak test for the next day or so.
The old HDD is now in a self-powered caddy, and the HDR-Fox can read it happily via the USB, so nothing lost.
The only commonality between this crash and one about four years ago on the original HDD from 2012 was I had been doing quite a lot of housekeeping, making space. I assume the directory structure became corrupted in each case by just enough that the cpu could not resolve it. However the caddy tends to fiddle around a bit with this and showed a couple of damaged files on the original HDD, but I've not found any on the most recent HDD (no 2).
I will add a small 12V 40mm Sunon inside the box to stir the air in the direction of the hot bits to reduce local heating.
Thanks again to this community for your help.
Still learning where everything goes on the forum.