Explorer 8300 Harddrive

goober22 · 08-26-2006, 09:16 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by mfabien

I read a contradiction in your reply:

Better get up during the night to find out that you can't hear the HDD spinning. Better still, power OFF one of the units tonight and listen to what happens in the morning when you power ON the DVR.

What the heck are you trying to say?

The HD in both my 8300s spin ALL THE TIME! Except when the unit TOTALLY powers down in the middle of the night. Even so, around 4:40am (according to the time stamps on the diag pages) the unit powers up and downloads the daily guide updates. From that point on, the HD spins constantly until the unit shuts down again the next day.

I do not leave them on when I am not watching them. They are always off unless we watch tv. When I awake the next morning, the HDs are already spinning again as they have powered up to download the daily updates.

If you are watching tv at 1am (or so) a message banner pops up saying that the unit is going to enter power-save mode but you can press any button to stop it. If you don't press a button or if the unit is already off, it enters power-save mode and every shuts down. Again the unit powers back up around 4:40am. The entire unit does not "turn on" as if you were watching tv but the unit powers back up, the guide data is downloaded and the HD is busy buffering away.

Is that plain enough? There are several modes but only one shuts down the HD and even then, the unit is not fully off as it does recover to record and download updates.

On = HDs buffering, front display on, outputs active (normal tv watching mode)
Off = HDs buffering, front display off, outputs off (normal unit off mode - standby mode)
On = HDs not spinning, front display off, outputs off (power save mode) (normally between 1-5am then unit leaves power save mode and returns to normal standby mode

But again (and as confirmed by the OP) the OP was asking about powering down just the HD and not the entire unit!