HD won't record

[geeman028]

Hi there, I got a M3 receiver recently. Very impressed to be honest. All seems to be working fine.
although I'm having a problem trying to record things on my HD. It's a western union 2TB mains powered. I already have about 300 movies on it so don't want to format it. Should it be on FAT because mine is on NTFS.
When I press record a message pops up saying 'USB too slow for action'

when I first plugged it in it recorded when I did a couple of test runs.
Anyone any ideas what could be causing this. It's a USB 2.0 by the way.

Another question was can I set a start and finish time for recording. I can only see manually start for a certain amount of time or by using the EPG but that only shows now and next.
Does that mean if I want to record something in the middle of the night, I have to record all through the night then scan through to find it later. Or wake up to start the recording.

Thanks in advance.

[Hadron]

...Another question was can I set a start and finish time for recording. I can only see manually start for a certain amount of time or by using the EPG but that only shows now and next.
Does that mean if I want to record something in the middle of the night, I have to record all through the night then scan through to find it later. Or wake up to start the recording.

Thanks in advance.

I don't understand why you think you need to record all through the night.

If a programme starts at 3am (for example) and finishes at 4.30am, then simply set a timer with an "on time" of 3am, with a duration of 1:30.

[geeman028]

That's what I cannot seem to find. Where is the start time option please.

[Hadron]

Assuming that your firmware is similar to the firmware on my S9, then in the system setup > timer setting menu, press OK to open a new timer menu. Timer mode = once or daily. Timer service = record. On Time = the time you want recording to start. Duration = duration of the recording.

Perhaps "On Time" should be more clearly labeled as "Start Time"?

[geeman028]

That's spot on mate. Thanks very much. No idea about my hard drive not recording though. I've gone to an older 80gb USB powered one and it works. Anyone know how many hours HD that will be able to record.

[mahrkpat]

For some recording on a hard drive bigger then 1Tb seems to be o.k but for others anything bigger than 1Tb does causes problem and another related problem with M3/F3 seems to be some work better with NTFS and others with FAT32. There does not seem to be any consistency in manufacture, even though the firmware is the same it seems like they have used different components in the hardware leading to this lack of consistency.

[geeman028]

For some recording on a hard drive bigger then 1Tb seems to be o.k but for others anything bigger than 1Tb does causes problem and another related problem with M3/F3 seems to be some work better with NTFS and others with FAT32. There does not seem to be any consistency in manufacture, even though the firmware is the same it seems like they have used different components in the hardware leading to this lack of consistency.

thanks for that bit of info. Now it makes sense to me. I was beginning to think I was doing something wrong. Got it all recording pausing rewinding perfectly now using my smaller 80GB portable HD.
I formatted that via the skybox and it did it in FAT32.

Thanks everyone for the help.