Noisy Hard Drive

Julian Johnson

New Member
My box is only a couple of months old and I love it, but...from the outset whilst the box is recording I get quite a loud disk i/0 noise. Not a constant whir/hum but the sound of the data being written to disk. Every second you might register three or four 'writes'. They're not overwhelmingly loud and when the TVs on you can barely here it but in a quiet room it's audible. It's noticeably louder when recording HD. Just wondering if this is normal or if other boxes are completely silent?
 
There is a range of reported "audibility", but we have to acknowledge there are moving parts and it is hardly surprising if they are audible in a quiet environment. Most people find the fan more intrusive than the hard drive (unless it's faulty), but the fan only kicks in periodically and it doesn't sound like you have anything to worry about at the moment.

The box is recording all the time it is out of stand-by - to the time shift buffer. That means that when it starts a scheduled recording it has to seek between two places on the disk and the volume goes up substantially. I've had it recording three and playing back two!
 
I have noticed the fan coming on after the unit has been powered up for a while, my assumption was that the hard disk doesn't spin down as it is always recording timeshift on the currently selected channel.

Does anyone know if you can turn off timeshift, I have no use for it and would prefer the HDD to spin down when it has been idle for a while?
 
Does anyone know if you can turn off timeshift, I have no use for it and would prefer the HDD to spin down when it has been idle for a while?

No, It is not possible to disable Time Shift recording on the HDR-Fox T2, the Hard Disk is, as you say always spinning and produces the majority of the heat being removed by the fan
 
How did you get it to record three?

It is not possible to record 'permanently' 3 programs at the same time, However when recording 2 programs and watching a third, the third program is being temporarily recorded as the Timeshift buffer, so after one of the other recordings has finished it is possible to re-wind the 'third' program and then press Record, this will allow the timeshift buffer to be transferred into a permanent recording file
 
when recording 2 programs and watching a third, the third program is being temporarily recorded as the Timeshift buffer
Thanks. I was thinking it was like the 9200T which has no usable buffer while two programmes are recording.
 
Does anyone know if you can turn off timeshift, I have no use for it and would prefer the HDD to spin down when it has been idle for a while?

I'm sure something could be done through the custom firmware with overlay mounts or redirections to null. Otherwise, Redring is in the right place to intercept the writes and discard them.
 
I'm sure something could be done through the custom firmware with overlay mounts or redirections to null. Otherwise, Redring is in the right place to intercept the writes and discard them.
Thanks for the reply.
Sounds good, but not something I could do. We only ever watch what we have recorded or live TV through the TV tuner, so it just isn't necessary for the disk to be working all the time the Hummy is on. We also use a Toppy and timeshifting can be switched off through the standard menu options.
 
To disable TSR (Time-shift-recording), tune into a channel which is not currently broadcasting (CITV is a good choice at this time of night) and run the disable_tsr diagnostic. You can do this from the Diagnostics page in the web interface.

From then on, the box will not maintain a TSR buffer which will cut down on disk activity and possibly heat and therefore fan noise but prevent pause/rewind functions.

To re-enable it again, run the enable_tsr diagnostic then change channel.
 
To disable TSR (Time-shift-recording), tune into a channel which is not currently broadcasting (CITV is a good choice at this time of night) and run the disable_tsr diagnostic. You can do this from the Diagnostics page in the web interface.

From then on, the box will not maintain a TSR buffer which will cut down on disk activity and possibly heat and therefore fan noise but prevent pause/rewind functions.

To re-enable it again, run the enable_tsr diagnostic then change channel.


Thanks for that, I will give it a go.

First I need to get the custom software up and running, not sure what firmware to go with. My box came with 1.02.26, but if I have understood things I will need to go back to 1.02.20 or upgrade to 1.02.27 (which seems to be getting some bad press around here).

Once I have figured out which way to jump I will give this a try.
 
As far as we know, the only difference between 1.0.26 and 1.0.27 was a fix for audio description volume. If you're happy with .26 then might as well go to .27.

Does Youtube work with .26? It doesn't with .27 but does with .20.
 
As far as we know, the only difference between 1.0.26 and 1.0.27 was a fix for audio description volume. If you're happy with .26 then might as well go to .27.

Does Youtube work with .26? It doesn't with .27 but does with .20.
Seems to work OK, just tried a views clips.
 
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