Sky HD Box Harddrive

LeoN88 · 29 Jan 2011 at 18:10

I currently have the standard sky hd box which I think its 320GB? But i'm looking at increasing it and installing this one:

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=HD-097-SA&groupid=701&catid=14&subcat=1279

to do this is it a simple case of just dismantling the box and replacing the old one with this one or does it need formatting?

Or am I looking at a totally wrong hardrive and should be a 2.5" or IDE etc?

I was contemplating getting the 3TB drive but have noticed that there are problems with these drives even working with some pc's once a harddrive goes over 2.19 gb so i'm guessing it would be useless for a sky box?

Only reason i want the biggest harddrive out there is because of the new atlantic channel with all of the tv series destined to be on it.

Thanks Leon

Grimley · 29 Jan 2011 at 20:17

There's quite a lot of sites/other forum threads that show you how to do this.

chaparral · 29 Jan 2011 at 20:20

I would go for the samsung F3 1TB 7200rpm drive http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=HD-082-SA&groupid=701&catid=14&subcat=1279

You need a very fast drive in the HD skybox (I.E the skybox can record two HD channels while your watching something on the planner)

Plus only some skyHD boxes support over 1TB harddrives

Which Skyhd box do you have ?

booyaka · 29 Jan 2011 at 23:10

http://www.skyuser.co.uk/forum/sky-...hd-box-walkthrough-how-change-hard-drive.html

loads of information here

Phil99 · 30 Jan 2011 at 02:17

You've got to be careful which harddisk you install due to power issues.

The Seagate Pipeline drives are your best bet, but I don't think they're available on OcUK.

Phil99 · 30 Jan 2011 at 02:19

chaparral said:
I would go for the samsung F3 1TB 7200rpm drive http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=HD-082-SA&groupid=701&catid=14&subcat=1279

You need a very fast drive in the HD skybox (I.E the skybox can record two HD channels while your watching something on the planner)

Plus only some skyHD boxes support over 1TB harddrives

Which Skyhd box do you have ?

IIRC that drive consumes double the amount of power the standard drive in the Sky box uses.

It may work for a while but you could end up with long term issues with dodgy capacitors and ultimately need to replace the PSU in the Sky box.

chaparral · 30 Jan 2011 at 02:31

Phil99 said:
IIRC that drive consumes double the amount of power the standard drive in the Sky box uses.

It may work for a while but you could end up with long term issues with dodgy capacitors and ultimately need to replace the PSU in the Sky box.

But you also get problems if you use a slow drive..

The EPG gets painfully slow as the harddrive fills up...
Found this out myself when i upgraded my last skyHD box with a western digital WD1000FYPS (WD RE2-GP) GreenPower harddrive

Phil99 · 30 Jan 2011 at 11:28

Yeah, I think that's why people recommend the Seagate Pipleline drives as Sky use them already in some of their boxes so they'll be fast enough and use an appropriate amount of power.

LeoN88 · 31 Jan 2011 at 17:28

Thanks for the link

I've decided to go down this route and got this one:

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=HD-327-WD&groupid=701&catid=14&subcat=1279

After reading through the comments on the other forum it seems that the sky box can be very temperamental with the hard drive needing to be quick but not consume so much power otherwise it can bugger up the power supply so I'm assuming this one should be great for both?

In case anyone is thinking of it doing themselves I'll give an update to let you know how it goes.

LeoN88 · 3 Feb 2011 at 10:28

booyaka said:
http://www.skyuser.co.uk/forum/sky-...hd-box-walkthrough-how-change-hard-drive.html

loads of information here

Went through the steps shown on the link above and was a doddle. 2TB of storage used 5 hours of HD recording and only 1% used so far! Really recommend people to do it instead of forking out £300 for a 1.5TB.

P.S thanks for the link.

sunny007 · 3 Feb 2011 at 10:30

LeoN88 said:
Went through the steps shown on the link above and was a doddle. 2TB of storage used 5 hours of HD recording and only 1% used so far! Really recommend people to do it instead of forking out £300 for a 1.5TB.

P.S thanks for the link.

How fast is the EPG ?

LeoN88 · 3 Feb 2011 at 17:05

The EPG seems to run more quickly maybe this is because the hard drive has got very little data on it at the moment. Whereas the OEM one seemed to take sometime to look through the week which i'm assuming is down to the hard drive usually only having >10%. Only time will tell how it goes when i get a few programs on it although i can't really see myself taking up all of the space on it

.

So all in all its seemed to have made it run more efficiently.

LeoN88 · 17 Mar 2011 at 19:26

UPDATE; As you can see above i removed the standard 320GB replacing it with a 2TB harddrive. It ran smoothly for the first couple of months up until i got to 50% and then once i tried to record anything or view any program it would go to a blank blue screen leading to me having to restart my sky box each time by unplugging it from the mains. I then proceeded to remove all the carp i didnt really need and even after this it still doesnt let me record any programs or watch any existing ones on my planner. My assumption is that the motherboard is only capable of working from a 1TB hardrive so whatever you do if you have an amstrad sky box do not fit a 2Tb harddrive!

dazzerd · 17 Mar 2011 at 22:36

Phil99 said:
You've got to be careful which harddisk you install due to power issues.

The Seagate Pipeline drives are your best bet, but I don't think they're available on OcUK.

+1 dont use an F3 the sky boxes psu is poo anyway and will just die quicker using that.