HDD failing - cause for glitching?

[ACTCMS]

My antenna is an internal loft yagi. Not the best location but I have no alternative. Makes it a bit sensitive to rain on the tiles, but previously nothing too bad, I am 10 miles from Sandy Heath Transmitter. I have checked the antenna orientation and looks ok to me, nothing has moved, and I have removed my distribution amp and run directly to the card (just to check).

I don't know if you have ever looked at http://www.ukfree.tv/txdetail.php?a=TL204494 but it will give you various details about your transmitter including aerial requirements, outages, signal strength etc. Depending on your line of sight, you could be prone to problems with the main ITV channels.

Might not be of any help on this occasion, but it's a good bookmark to have anyway, in case of catastophic reception problems. Makes sense to check the status of your transmitter before tampering with your own hardware/software settings...

[RangerBob]

ACTCMS, thanks but I have checked the service status, all good. I would expect ITV etc, to glitch the most as it is using the 64QAM multiplex, however BBC channels are just as bad. Signal strength should be ok, I am within 8 miles of the transmitter with no major obstructions, using a wideband antenna. I think I might try and lay my hands on a signal strength meter, just to be sure though.

Completely removed weather plugin to no effect. System drive has 10gb free, TV buffer partition is 10gb and empty, Recordings partition has 40gb free, Storage partition has 50gb free. All defraged very regularly. AV & spyware comes back clean.

However, I think this machine has something amiss.

I ran Windows update, just to see what was missing, just a few minor patches and a driver update for the video card (the machine itself runs headless as a server most of the time, so not a major issue). On restarting after the update, windows was borked. No boot, no safe boot, no last known configuration, nothing.

Ended up trashing the boot.ini along with a few other items, then rebuilding them to get it back up again (stupid XP recovery disks with no repair option!).

I will make do for the moment. As soon as the next release is ready, I think i'll trash the current install and reinstall a completely fresh one. I ran all the tests the Seatools app had, and all came back clean, so I do think the SMART readings are a red herring.

Thanks all!

[stustunz]

what virus scanner do you use?

[stustunz]

what mux do you use?

[RangerBob]

AVG and Cyberlink v.5.0.1307 respectively

[stustunz]

your best to have at least 2 physical drives
but probably not the cause but wouldnt help
i never record/buffer to the same physical hard drive as the operating system
good luck let us know when you figure it out
if its loosing files and not starting then the hard drive may be on the way out
does the hard drive make much noise any clicking ?