OK - so I went through some stuff, got a USB 8GB pen drive and was just about to upgrade to the Vix image when my daughter managed to pull the portable hdd out of the front USB port. Soooo, I plugged it into the back USB and started to record. Many minutes and setting changes later, I have managed to record 3 things since... Granted not full programs, as I was testing, but still it is promising.

Something that I have seen that is different from earlier, is that before the portable HDD was setup as media/usb, now it is setup as media/sdb1...

Looks promising. Will check overnight, and will update on the other recording threads on my findings