# [SOLVED] Philips HDT8520/05 Hard Drive Problem



## oldnorm (Dec 13, 2010)

I have a Philips HDT8520/05 Digital Video Recorder. There are problems with the hard drive (HD).
A lot of programs were recorded on the HD and on selecting the HD information menu, it says the HD is full. Delete a program to be able to record. The puzzle is there are no previously recorded programs listed. It seems the drive has lost its index. I do want to recover these programs if possible.
Can you please answer a few questions about the HD that I have in mind.
Is it possible to remove the hard drive and connect it to a computer?
What is the interface of the hard drive.? Is it IDE? 
What interface hardware do I need? IDE to USB adapter as an example.
What disk software do I need to examine the contents of the hard drive and re-instate the list of files.
Any help would be gratefully received.
Thank you.


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## Tyree (May 10, 2009)

*Re: Philips HDT8520/05 Hard Drive Problem*

Any Data on the the Hdd "should" be recoverable by slaving it into a PC or by using a Hdd to USB adapter. I can't find any info about the connection type of the Hdd. If it's not to old, it "should" be SATA.


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## oldnorm (Dec 13, 2010)

*Re: Philips HDT8520/05 Hard Drive Problem*

Thank you for your help. I have more appreciation now of how to go about my task but need help on being told how to re-instate the list of recorded programs that currently are not visible. i.e. the HD seems to have lost its index.


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## JimE (Apr 16, 2009)

*Re: Philips HDT8520/05 Hard Drive Problem*

Is it possible to remove the hard drive and connect it to a computer? Yes. However, these type of devices typically do not use a file system readable by Windows.

What is the interface of the hard drive.? Is it IDE? The only way to know for sure is to open the device and check.

What interface hardware do I need? IDE to USB adapter as an example. A USB adapter will work and they typically support both drive types.

What disk software do I need to examine the contents of the hard drive and re-instate the list of files? Most any data recovery software should work. However, as stated previously, Windows very likely won't be able to read the drive file system. Whether or not Data Recovery software running on Windows can read the drive I do not know.


The first step would be to test the HDD. This can be done using the drive manufacturers disk tools.

There is very likely a reason the data is missing. The HDD is likely faulty, or the unit itself corrupted the HDD. So simply restoring/recovering the disk may not even resolve the issue.


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## oldnorm (Dec 13, 2010)

*Re: Philips HDT8520/05 Hard Drive Problem*

Thank you for your suggestions. The hard drive (SATA) had lost its formatting (computer disk manager and video recorder showed this, and after re-formatting the disc the recorder works fine. I could not recover files not displayed which I tried before formatting.
Case closed now.
Thank you.


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## JimE (Apr 16, 2009)

*Re: Philips HDT8520/05 Hard Drive Problem*



oldnorm said:


> The hard drive (SATA) had lost its formatting (computer disk manager and video recorder showed this.


The computer (using Windows) cannot read the disk, thus it will state the disk is not formatted. So that is not a good indication.

In any event, glad you have it working.


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