Hard disk RDR-HXD870 lost digital channels

[SteveIReeve]

This is an old device but until a recent retune it worked. It is running firmware 1.44. It now looses all digital channels overnight. I have tried to update to firmware 1.70 including via 1.66 but nothing is happening. I get no error messages. I get LOAD and DISC-DWLD the draw opens I remove disc the draw closes and the recorder goes to standby. Much later I turn it on and there are no channels and no update of software. Is there any help out there.

[shirleyperry]

You are kind to put so much effort into this. Sadly, I had already followed your last set of instructions, but with still no response from the recorder. I had then spotted a posting of yours from a different thread which said that it did need to be a bootable disk, so I was hoping that this was where I had gone wrong. I'll try making it bootable and add the file twice and see what happens. I don't have much to lose now.

I'm starting to think that the problem might be that my current version is 1.15. Perhaps I would have needed to update to 1.43 first, but I can't find an update file for this so I might be scuppered. 

[Mooly01]

You're very welcome. These are brilliant machines and well worth the effort.

I couldn't remember on the bootable question tbh but if I've mentioned that in the past then yes, set the option.

Not sure what adding the file twice would do with respect to the burn. The ISO file needs to be a single file on the disc for the recorder to recognise it.

What discs are you using? Are they CDR's, CDRW's or DVDR's or RW's. If they are RW's are you fully erasing and formatting them first. There is an option to do that in Ashampoo.

[Mooly01]

I've just tried burning a file to a DVDRW to see if it jogged my memory.

When you click the 'Make Bootable' option it asks for a boot file and I'm certain none of that happened. If you select the MEM file as a boot file, well it's just not recognised. The file options it asks for are .Boot-Files'. That never happened

I know that contradicts what I posted earlier but its a long time ago now and doing it all again and I never remember using that option. The disc has to be 'bootable' but I think that happens by default because of the file type. So I'm going to say no, we don't use that option. Just select the file in the normal way and burn it.

So I don't remember ever doing this or seeing this. It's so specific I would have done if it happened.

When the file has burned (without ticking the bootable option) it looks like this in Windows File Explorer. If you right click the file and select 'Properties' you should see this.

So this is the MEM 1.70 file on the disc after it has burned.

[shirleyperry]

Yes they are great machines - I even bought an extra second hand one this summer, as the disk write heads on one of my two recorders were starting to fail. But I'm starting to lose hope.  I'm using CD-Rs. The disk I wrote with boot image selected (and with the filename selected on both screens) looked in file explorer to just contain the one file. But the recorder still reacted the same way - disk dwld then stops and turns the tv back on.

File explorer doesn't show the ISO format, but there can't be any doubt that this is set now, so I'm stuck. I'll try Sony support to see if there's an intermediate update file, but I don't hold out much hope of a response.

I'll also try the manual tuning that was suggested by someone else. I don't understand a word of the post, but hopefully it'll make more sense when I try it.

If you have any more suggestions, I'd welcome them gratefully, but I expect we've reached the limit of what you can do. Many thanks again for being so generous with your time and expertise.

[shirleyperry]

Sorry, I posted my last reply before your latest popped up. The properties of the file on the disk I created without the boot option looks just like your screen shot. (But then, so do the ones I wrote before explicitly setting ISO format.)

So I think we've run out of options?

[Mooly01]

You sound to be doing everything correctly. Possibly it is related to trying to go from 1st generation to last generation firmware in one go, Sony mention that as you say.

I've tried looking on Sony support sites away from the UK but haven't turned up any older versions that 1.66  

I dunno at this point I'm afraid... but would say don't give up just yet. If it comes down to 'nothing to lose' then if I had it in front of me I would try a factory reset, and then see if you could get it to update from the disc.

If you have a machine that needs a new HDD then these are easily replaceable in sizes up to 1Tb BUT you need a service remote to format the new HDD. Those are (were) available on Amazon cheaply. I swapped mine to a 500Gb. I wonder if you could swap HDD's between machines and for them to be recognised correctly. If you are in a nothing to lose situation...   

I've got two of these recorders and got a third for some friends and I've updated firmware on all of them without issue in the past. You really do sound to be doing everything correctly.