I recently bought a hard disk recorder to timeshift TV. Can I assume the hard disk works like a PC hard disk and needs a periodic clean-up? Jim Curran
Yes, hard disk recorders (sometimes called DVRs for digital video recorders) work much like PCs running Windows Media Centre or MythTV, and sometimes have defragmentation problems. The manual may offer an "optimise" function such as Sky+ Planner rebuild, which will at least do a tidy-up and could recover some storage space.
If you can connect a PC via a USB port, you may be able to see the DVR's hard disk as an external drive. If it uses the FAT file format, then standard Windows utilities should work on it -- but try this at your own risk!
DVR disks are subject to failure, the same as PC hard drives, and should therefore be regarded as temporary storage. Anything you want to keep should be burned to DVD.
Web extra: Does anyone have a tip for defragging a particular video recorder?
