Why does the hard drive turn itself on & off (sometimes avery few minutes) when the DVR isn't recording anything? It's annoying in the middle of the night when I'm trying to sleep. Is there a way to fix it? Perhaps the internal HD needs to be defragged or something? This is with an 8300 non HDTV version with an external WD My DVR Expander hooked up to it.

I can't answer the "why" question, but I have noticed the same behavior. My solution (actually just a workaround of sorts) is to leave the box "on" when the TV is off. Yesterday the internal hard drive was really chattering, as if it were spinning on & off with a cycle time of perhaps a little less than 1 second, which was really annoying. Turning the box on stopped the chatter.

I can't answer the "why" question, but I have noticed the same behavior. My solution (actually just a workaround of sorts) is to leave the box "on" when the TV is off. Yesterday the internal hard drive was really chattering, as if it were spinning on & off with a cycle time of perhaps a little less than 1 second, which was really annoying. Turning the box on stopped the chatter.

But mine does it when the box is left on.

But mine does it when the box is left on.I haven't figured out a way to sensitize the box to the problem -- that is, how to reproduce it. (Yesterday while the box was off, and had been off for over 12 hours, it started making the annoying noise. I turned it on, and the noise stopped. I turned it back off, and the noise started again, so I just turned it back on. Later I turned it off, and it has been fairly silent since then. But this box is not in a bedroom, and we can tolerate quite a bit of racket from it because the radio may be on, there's just more ambient noise during the day, etc.)

I had some other problems that occurred a few weeks after I installed the 1 TB Apricorn DVR Xpander -- several recorded shows were unavailable -- they showed up in the list, but would not play -- and at least one recording had a weird problem -- it's a four-minute segment of a newscast, and it was showing up once correctly, and once as a 30-minute Three Sheets episode. (That is, there's an entry in the list that appears to be a 30-minute Three Sheets, but if I try to play it I get the 4-minute excerpt of the newscast that also appears elsewhere as itself.) Also, I think the percentage of free space was showing as quite a bit less than it should have been. I sort of panicked and deleted a bunch of the shows that I couldn't play, some of which were things I had actually wanted to keep, before I thought of rebooting the box. Then I just unplugged it and plugged it back in, and after it came up, the remaining shows that I had been unable to play were fine. Only the News/Three Sheets mix-up remained.

That's a long way of saying -- I suggest you try a reboot. I think it's good general advice that if the box is doing something flaky, it may be time to pull the plug briefly.

I haven't figured out a way to sensitize the box to the problem -- that is, how to reproduce it. (Yesterday while the box was off, and had been off for over 12 hours, it started making the annoying noise. I turned it on, and the noise stopped. I turned it back off, and the noise started again, so I just turned it back on. Later I turned it off, and it has been fairly silent since then. But this box is not in a bedroom, and we can tolerate quite a bit of racket from it because the radio may be on, there's just more ambient noise during the day, etc.)

That's a long way of saying -- I suggest you try a reboot. I think it's good general advice that if the box is doing something flaky, it may be time to pull the plug briefly.

Well mine is in the bedroom & I'm sorta used to the racket. If I'm sound asleep then thankfully it doesn't wake me up. But if I haven't fallen asleep for very long then yes I hear the racket in a quiet room & yes I can love with it. Have tried rebooting & it didn't help. Must be the way my 8300 likes to work as it also does it during the day too not just at night. Maybe since I've done recordings at all hours during the TCM Stars Of Summer series a few months ago it's decided to be ready to record (hard drive raring to go) for more often than it's set for!! I had it recording 24x7 to the to the 500 gigabyte external hard drive for a whole month. Meanwhile during my waking hours it was also playing back what it had recorded to a DVD recorder I've got connected to it. At the moment it has a few TV shows plus some movies on it so it indicates 35% full and slowly dropping as I've quit recording movies for awhile. Don't remember it making much racket before mid summer but perhaps I don't remember it doing so.