I have had my 8300Hd for 6 years and upgraded the internal drive after the first year to 320gb drive. yesterday it crashed and tried to reboot it self constantly and kept saying checking/preparing the pvr. The info data pages shows some corruption of the hard drive, so I did a hard reformat, the cable box seems to work (can watch and change channels) but the PVR does not record and is very slow when I try to get into the pvr menu.

I was thinking that the hard drive is dead and I need to replace it?

Did you contact Rogers? What did they say?

Certainly the HDD could be dead. I assume you purchased the PVR. Here's the SA FAQ with a "last ditch" rescue attempt at the bottom of post 1.

http://www.digitalhome.ca/forum/showthread.php?t=17719

A new WD 500 GB PATA drive is about $90...

My 8300 is also 6 years old and the drives (internal and external) lasted about 3-4 years each with pretty heavy use.

I did not contact rogers as my SD PVR seems to work and the signal to the HD PVR is better (1 less split), plus my HD PVR is 6 years old and out of warranty. I just seemed like an HDD problem so I thought of putting in a new 500gb HDD

You may have been typing as I posted above. Here's a thread you can post in too once you know for sure. ;)

http://www.digitalhome.ca/forum/showthread.php?t=125077

Thanks. I already did a hard reformat (and lost all my kids shows - about 100 of them!). I will pick up a new HDD on the way home today. Was going to buy the new PVR but saw several problems that people are having with the new 500gb Cisco PVR

I would contact Rogers to rule out the fact that its not something other than the hard drive.

See http://www.digitalhome.ca/forum/showthread.php?t=15719

for replacing