510 and hard drive clicking noise...

[bub]

I had two 501's for over a year and never had any problems with hard drive clicking noise (although DN had to send me 3 receivers to get the 2 I ended up with as one had the clicking noise).

Now, I've upgraded to a 510 and the clicking coming from the hard drive is driving me nuts (short trip). DN has sent me 4 or 5 replacement 510's and each and every one has horribly loud and constant clicking noise coming from the hard drive. I'm at my wits end here. Most of the DN tech's claim that I shouldn't hear any clicking coming from the hard drive and are very willing to replace the unit, but occasionally I get a tech who claims this is normal. I can't stand it as you can hear the noise two rooms away and if I have a timer set to record something at night, I can hear the clicking from the bedroom where I sleep. As well, when watching my 6000 while the 510 is recording something else, the clicking sound is so annoying that it ruins the HD experience.

Anybody have any ideas? I'm about ready to tell DN to take the thing back.

Thanks for any information,
George -bub

 

[sprintcarcrazy]

I have a JVC 510 From Sears, No problems or Noises !

 

[BobMurdoch]

The hard drive noise is discernible, but I have an electric room heater (instead of making the whole house 74 degrees, we just crank up the heater in our bedroom which is surrounded by three exterior walls (forced air heating doesn't help much). In the summer the ceiling fan drowns out the noise.

If you can't kill the noise try some of these other tricks.

1. Put it in a cabinet or enclosure with a door. The RF remote doesn't need a direct line of sight.
2. My heater and ceiling fan act as great white noise generators. If you don't want to use these, try something else that will mask the sound.
3. If you are feeling really ambitious, put the receiver in a closet with plenty of room on top of the unit for ventilation and run coax to your TV under the floor in the crawlspace or basement. This won't work if you have a high end system in your bedroom and you use RCA or SVideo interconnects.

My 510 doesn't really make a lot of clicking sounds (although I consider "clicking" as that scary sound hard drives make right before they die), but it does chirp somewhat annoyingly.