Video Freeze then audio goes then a hard restart is required

[prpr]

Here are the results of "smartctl" to be read 001, 002, 003 with some overlap.

You've got 11 bad sectors that need to be remapped with fix-disk, but the odd errors are a bit of a cause for concern. Maybe they're related - I don't know.
I would format partition 3, then run fix-disk, then when it's finished run smartctl again and see what it says.
But be prepared to replace the disk if the oddness continues.

 

[AntS]

For the record here are the results of "smartctl" after the reformat via:
umount /mnt/hd3
mkfs.ext3 /dev/hda3

I know it is very top level but before the format the "Used" pie chart stood at a little over 18.6GB with only one very short recording on the unit but now stands at 0.1GB.

I reconnected the unit to my TV and left it alone for a long while and so far (after a couple of hours) the video freeze/sound loss/crash has not occurred.

It seems that the problem was (as several people thought) down to a corrupted hard drive and the reformat via telnet seems to have been the required fix.

Thanks to everyone for their help in this matter. Not only have you saved me the hassle of buying a new FREESAT HDR (or an new 1GB drive) I have also learnt quite lot.

 

[prpr]

I know it is very top level but before the format the "Used" pie chart stood at a little over 18.6GB with only one very short recording on the unit but now stands at 0.1GB.

That'll be the Time-Shift-Replay buffer that's missing. Maybe the Foxsat is too dumb to recreate the directories unless it formats the partition, so you may need to do it manually:

mkdir /mnt/hd3/Video
mkdir /mnt/hd3/Movie

and it should then create 0.ts and 0.nts in the Video directory.

I reconnected the unit to my TV and left it alone for a long while and so far (after a couple of hours) the video freeze/sound loss/crash has not occurred.

That's good.

It seems that the problem was (as several people thought) down to a corrupted hard drive and the reformat via telnet seems to have been the required fix.

Don't forget you still need to fix the bad sectors by running fix-disk.

I have also learnt quite lot.

Excellent!