Sky+ HD upgrade (1TB)

[Deleted member 651465]

Hey all,

Decided to replace my near 2-year old Thompson digibox with a shiny new Pace box and 1TB upgrade. Everyday I'd have some sort of problems, be it blue screens, poor signal strength, failed recordings etc. and I was fed up.

Anyway, I thought I'd post some pictures of my recent upgrade on here, to show those who might be interested.

Kit:

• Pace TDS850NB Sky+ HD Digibox
• Samsung Spinpoint F1 HD103UJ (1000GB)

Suprisingly, there is not a lot you need in the way of tools:

• T10 Torx security driver
• Something to help pry the case open (I used spoons)
• Phillips screwdriver to remove the HDD.

For those that may not know: Any drive over 500GB will need to be prepped with a free program called skycopyplus before it can be used.

I used 2 USB caddies plugged in a to a laptop, however you can insert the drives directly in to a PC to perform the copy.

As I was not transferring any recordings the process took seconds.

Finally, these pictures aren't meant to be a step-by-step guide. Just a documentation of the upgrade.

You can find guides to upgrading a particular digibox (each brand varies slightly) here




16x HD movies recorded, and 93% free

 

[Deleted member 651465]

-Ad- I had a Thompson box, and replaced it with a Pace one from Satbuyer

Also, I couldn't find that WD drive on the usual etailer sites (that could get here by today e.g. before easter) and to be honest the Samsung is near-silent (even without adjust the acoustic management) and a good performer.

The 1TB limit is due to Sky software limitations, so you can't go bigger...

You may notice that I chose to disconnect the small ribbon cable from the upper button board, I didn't fancy twisting the lugs with my uber-sized pliers and it was enough enough to put back in.

 

[Deleted member 651465]

actaully the limit is 500GB that the software will use

Yes, without the skycopyplus program the box will only use 500GB.

However, there is also software on the sky end that physically cannot exceed 1TB, because of the filesystems in use.

There are people who have RAID'd 2x 750GB drives, and limited them to the maximum 1TB as a single 1TB drive will only ever be ~940GB

 

[Deleted member 651465]

Nice one, glad you have a good samsung drive. I use them in my pc and have never had problems.

Got to love these PACE boxes.

Yeah, that's why I was confident about choosing it (I'd heard reports on AVForums that people had used it successfully) and I'd also used them in PCs with no trouble. At first I was contemplating adjusting the acoustic management, but to be honest I'm glad I didn't, totally unnessecary.

First real test last night.. hammered it with back to back dual recordings and it didn't miss a beat. Even the FF/RW on playback was smooth; on the old Thompson if you hit 30x it would go slowly (~6x) for about 5 second then catch up at 30x. Annoying!!

The signal strength is also full, unlike the Thompson which usually showed 3/4 bars, hence my pic of that.. couldn't be happier.

I was suprised how easy it was to use the skycopyplus program though. Perhaps it's because I wasn't transferring recordings (I did a forced update on the system with the old 300GB drive before I put the 1TB in)

 

[Deleted member 651465]

Totally agree with your tests too. FF etc is perfect and hammering with a number of recordings + some timeshifting works fine too. Highly recommended upgrade, and copy+ is fantastic too, kudos to the creator for making something soo easy to use. Also very helpful on the copy+ forum

Been recording madly over the past few days and am still at 93%, and that's with mainly HD programs and films.

Won't have enough time to watch all these recordings

I recorded the new Red Dwarf episode, and perhaps 8 or so other SD programs and a 2hr HD film and I'm still at 98%!

i think i need to do this but im too scared i'll balls it up

If you can upgrade a PC you can do this. Look at my original post, there are several step-by-step guides to follow, you can't really go wrong if you have the right tools and go slowly. Biggest challenge is the copying of recordings (and that was a button click!)

If you need help swing me an email.

 

[Deleted member 651465]

Just ordered a 1Tb WD EVCS drive
I dont have any recordings to transfer over to this 1TB drive.

I will use an internal SATA connection on my PC to connect the removed SkyHD drive -> make an image of it -> remove drive -> install new 1Tb drive into PC -> copy image on to it

Can i do the above using Copy+ ?

You'll need to use Copy+ to do that.

Yes, it's possible and it's what I did (no transferring of programmes)

@ Toekiller ... faster box? Thompson?

 

[Deleted member 651465]

Did you zip tie the power and HDD cables yourself Ad or did it come like that?

It's like that by default on the Pace box.

I just chose to cut mine and re-zip them after I took the pictures (easier to install the drive).

I'm looking to upgrade my Sky HD box this week. .
Could anyone advise me which hard drive would be a good for my box i was looking at getting a Western Digital 1TB Hard Drive SATAII 7200rpm 32MB Cache - OEM Green Power would that be any good?

Though i have found a good price on a Hitachi DeskStar 1TB Hard Drive SATAII 7200rpm 16MB Cache but not to sure if there any good?

Thomson 4E300E
EPG Sky+8.3.2

Thanks.

This is not strict, but I can show you which drives NOT to use, and which ones work 100%.

http://www.geocities.com/skypluswss/hdd.htm

 

[Deleted member 651465]

Thanks for this i'll read up on this and make a order little worried about doing this but i build loads of computers etc so hoping i'll be alright

Looks like the Samsung F1 HD103UJ/Y is a good one to use .

Check my original post for a step-by-step walkthrough for the Pace box.

You'll do it easy