Tom,
Mine did the exact same thing recently (
posted problem ). I had over 20 hours or recorded shows that were snuffed when I held down the power button to soft boot after the system locked up. I also have a Panasonic HS2000 by the way.
I have the drive connected to my Win2k PC right now, and I'm trying to recover the programs from the drive with extract_rtv, but I'm not having much luck. I posted a request for help (
extract_rtv, huh? ) with the extract_rtv results, but no one has responded yet.
If I ever get a response from people "in the know" with regard to the results from that program, I'll post the information here. In the meantime, all I can tell you is, from the SS's perspective, your FAT is wiped, and your programs are gone (the system has no "record" of your programs and reports nothing recorded). This is like deleting a file from your PC. The file itself isn't "gone", but the record of it has been altered so the system no longer "sees" it. If you do not record anything new to the drive, I think your likelihood for recovering your programs will be greater, but until I get more help myself, I can't say much else.
Regardless, recovery will require removing the drive from the box, and if you are still under warrantee, you might want to think twice about this. Perhaps, if it still under warrantee, you could get assistance from Panasonic? I wouldn't count on it in this case, though. When I spoke with them on Friday, they said anything software related was handled by ReplayTV, and they couldn't assist, and I don't know what Replay will suggest with regard to recovering "deleted" shows.
Short answer: in the future, if the system should lock up again, I'd suggest pulling the plug. I have only heard of the mass wipe thing happening when the power button was held down. Other than that, I'm in the same boat you are, and if I can get someone to pass me an oar, I'll let you know how it goes.
David.