# reformat of Philips DSR-704 (DIRECTV receiver/dvr)



## beltz97 (Dec 7, 2009)

hi - i have a Philips DSR-704 that is a couple yrs old now. it's worked fine up until recently. the symptons i notice:
1) on playback: intermittingly it will freeze up (sometimes w/ pixelation, sometimes not)...for 15, 30 sec or so at a time, repeatedly...like it's in a "bad" spot of the drive
2) on viewing live tv: intermittingly it will pixelate noticably

**i've noticed the signal strength to be usually 93 or more on 1 tuner and 89 or more on the 2nd tuner. 

i called directv and they told me i needed to reformat the drive....they said if i turn the unit off (unplug it) for 2 hrs...that when i plugged it back in i would see an option to reformat it....

but that was NOT the case

anyone know how to reformat this unit? (w/o having to pull out the drive - i.e. thru the menu or some button on it??)

Thanks


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## John T Smith (Jun 17, 2004)

Somewhere in the menu, a clear and delete all


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## beltz97 (Dec 7, 2009)

ok i'll have to take a closer look, have never came across this b4. 

i have a hard time believing this will fix anything....


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## beltz97 (Dec 7, 2009)

thanks for the info


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## stevel (Aug 23, 2000)

It's under "Restart the recorder" in System Settings or something like that. This is NOT a reformat, but rather a clearing of the Media File System. But I share your doubt that it will fix anything. The symptoms are of a disk going bad.


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## John T Smith (Jun 17, 2004)

If you do need to replace the drive, and you have two USB ports on your computer, this product will clone the drive to a new one, and will even make additional space available if you buy a larger hard drive

http://mfslive.org/winmfs/

I have cloned/enlarged several 80Gig drives to new 320Gig drives... just be sure you buy IDE drives, not SATA drives


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## catocony (Nov 14, 2006)

Sounds like possibly a bad tuner. Is it happening on both tuners? If so, it's a hard drive. If not, then it's probably a tuner.


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## Sea bass (Jun 9, 2005)

stevel said:


> It's under "Restart the recorder" in System Settings or something like that. This is NOT a reformat, but rather a clearing of the Media File System. But I share your doubt that it will fix anything. The symptoms are of a disk going bad.


Definite bad drive...I had this happen 6 months ago and again tonight. Just ordered a new drive...


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