Limit Reached!

[Fejinwales]

I have a Skybox F5S, It had a portable 500GB HDD connected and I have had no issues with recordings until today. It is almost empty so last night (early hours really) I set it to record the cricket. Got up this morning and it had turned the channel but recorded nothing. I was extremely p****d. I then tried to enter a new short timer recording to see if it would work but when I clicked the OK button I was told that the data was invalid (or something like that). I then tried a direct record with the record button and had "Limit Reached" come on screen. I took out the drive and put in a thumb drive and it recorded onto it just fine using the record button. I assume it would work with a timer.

Finally, tonight I reconnected the HDD and set a timer for a programme about Concorde (which it allowed me to do this time), and again it turned the channel but did not record. Pressing the record button directly still gives me the "Limit Reached!"

Can anyone help me out here as to why this is happening? I want to use that drive to record a lot of the Olympics in February.

[slugworth]

delete 1 recording and try recording again.

[bbb_uk]

How much space is free on it?

Could you have disc errors? Run a check to see if there are any errors.

[Fejinwales]

Hi, thanks for the replies. There are no other programmes to delete on the drive, I had deleted them already. The HDD has 2/3rds of 500GB of free space, I checked it for errors and there were none. I don't want to format it as there are backup images on there for my computer system and all my audio.

[bbb_uk]

I'm assuming the drive is FAT32.

When you say you get limit reached error when manual recording, how long was the manual recording for and was it a HD channel?

I'm only asking because FAT32 only supports a single file size of 4gb (which is a huge file) but if you're recording something in HD and it's a very long programme then I don't know if the box automatically checks there is enough space first. Personally, I can't see the box checking but don't know for sure.

What I would do is see if you can record a programme of only 30mins long (HD or SD).

If you can't then have you a usb drive spare with sufficient capacity to do a manual test record with that instead of your hdd?

[Fejinwales]

Hi bbb_uk. Ok - the channel was an HD channel and it did allow me to put in the timer recording for nine hours (cricket match). I do know the HDD is NTFS and that there is 200GB free on it. I can record a programme on timer or directly on any thumb drive I put into the slot. It is just the HDD that it has messed up. It still works on the computer and I just deleted the folder that the box created again, as well as the test write files. Just to be clear though I have to put here that the drive was working, I could record on it and in fact used it all the time rather than a thumb drive to get rid of the annoying 'Drive Speed Too Slow' warning I was having with the sticks. I also deleted each programme after I watched it so the drive never ended up even being close to full.

To be honest I am having issues with the box that started a week and a half ago and have gotten progressively worse, lip-sync problems and it even records with lip-sync out when the actual programme is fine!!, freezing etc as well as the occasional complete lock-up and black screen with no audio when coming out of EPG. I think the box might be on its way out despite being just a month or so old. But of course these cannot be addressed in this post.

As I said earlier, I do not want to have to format the drive but I may have to.

[slugworth]

you would have those symptoms if it were formatted to ntfs,which is likely if it was originally in a pc for pc use.

[Fejinwales]

Which particular symptoms would I have? Just the issues with recording I assume, but it worked fine for over two weeks. The HDD was bought formatted to NTFS as it is a USB3 drive.

[DW190]

Which particular symptoms would I have? Just the issues with recording I assume, but it worked fine for over two weeks. The HDD was bought formatted to NTFS as it is a USB3 drive.

Format it using the box.

[Fejinwales]

I don't know how to do that. I was hoping I wouldn't have to as I have said, there's other stuff on there, backups of my computer etc. I might format it in the PC, partition it, put back my backups and then format the remaining partition in the box if I can work out how. Seeing as there seems to be no other choice here.

[bbb_uk]

If you're going to partition it then I would make the first drive as your FAT32 (and primary drive).

I don't know how the box would react to several partitions but at a guess it would only see the first one which is why I would make that the primary FAT32 one.

With regards to the other problems with box, was this after recently updated firmware poss even the channel list? I had issues with random freezes on this box after a previous firmware flash so proceeded to backup everything I needed and restore to defaults, delete channel list, reflash firmware, restore to defaults again, restore channel list (this channel list I was using for a while so I knew it was ok) and other things.

This may have been overkill but it worked. Well for me, anyhow.

[Fejinwales]

thanks for that. The box does recognise both partitions but it always defaults to the first one which was a bit of a bummer as I made the second one the biggest the first time around. I formatted it NTFS because I want to record hours of HD.

The other problems just began about a week or so ago, no updates to firmware or channel list. By this morning the freezez were coming in at a stupid rate of 20 in half an hour, by tonight once every 45seconds to 1m15 seconds, and that didn;t include the scrambled signals which while watching 'The Host' slapped me with three in a minute. My internet is fine, ping of never over 33ms as it has been for the month since I got the box. In the end I unplugged the power from the back in temper and left it for a while. Working better at the moment since plugging it in but I am going to send it back if I can as un-watchable.

Thanks foir the advice, unfortunately I never worked out why the box kept saying 'Limit Reached!'. If I have a new box at least it will only have to be the dedicated partition I'll have to format.

[DW190]

I don't know how to do that.

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