A broadcast receiver includes a tuner section for receiving a broadcast program, an MPEG decoder 126 for converting a signal coming from the tuner section into a given format, and a hard disk drive (HDD) for recording the converted digital signal. In the broadcast receiver, a HDD medium of the HDD for recording the received broadcast program has, separately, a stream area for storing stream data as a video/audio signal, and a management data area for storing management data other than the stream data, and these areas are formatted by each different given unit. With such a structure, the broadcast receiver becomes highly-usable, requiring less time for the search operation on an HDD at the time of system startup. There is also a method for recording broadcast programs received by the broadcast receiver, and an information recorder for such use.