When sky replace a broken box will they try to transfer data from it?

rotters · 30 Jun 2013 at 19:13

Kids have lots of films on our sky hd box and it looks like it needs replacing, will they transfer the data or is it lost? Kids will be gutted if it is.

Cheers in advance.

rotters

TheVoice · 30 Jun 2013 at 19:32

Highly unlikely.

panyan · 30 Jun 2013 at 19:35

data is lost i think

make sure you have a binge day and watch it all before the box is replaced

MissChief · 30 Jun 2013 at 20:28

No data will be transferred, straight swap.

rotters · 30 Jun 2013 at 20:33

I know you work for them mischief, its such a common request from what I can google, why hasn't it been looked into and sorted, it would only take a sky authorised laptop to Channel the data through surely?

Not a flippant question but genuine interest.

lucid · 30 Jun 2013 at 21:42

rotters said:
... it would only take a sky authorised laptop to Channel the data through surely?

Time, surely.

Are you happy to pay for the engineers time while the data is transferred? It won't be a five minute job.

V F · 30 Jun 2013 at 22:38

Yeah, I'd imagine that would take an hour or so to transfer... depending how big the drive is. Do most have the 500GB box with the silver front?

I wouldn't like to wait on that.

Is most of this stuff recorded? most stuff on OnDemand expires mid to late next year.

MissChief · 1 Jul 2013 at 02:35

As said above, it would take quite a while. Imagine a 2TB sky+HD box with over 75% used space. That's over 1TB of data and would take several hours. Sky even looked into removable caddies so you could hot-swap discs but it was thought likely some people would swap disc drives between boxes.

Psycho Sonny · 2 Jul 2013 at 01:28

MissChief said:
As said above, it would take quite a while. Imagine a 2TB sky+HD box with over 75% used space. That's over 1TB of data and would take several hours. Sky even looked into removable caddies so you could hot-swap discs but it was thought likely some people would swap disc drives between boxes.

why would they swap them between boxes? and why would that be a bad thing?

unless your implying someone would give somebody else their hard drive for them to record a show or something onto it for them to watch, then surely it's such a limited and stupid way of doing things it wouldn't be worthwhile. first of all you need an active sub to decrypt the recorded data do you not? therefore it wouldn't work unless you had the channel yourself, therefore why not record it yourself.

also to answer the OP, im pretty sure you can swap the hard drives yourself. are you buying a new box from sky or is it a warranty replacement?

if i was you i would have just bought a second hand box from gumtree (i got one with a wireless connector for £25) and then swap the drive myself into the working box and then pair that with your card.

Begbie · 2 Jul 2013 at 10:16

It doesn't get done, no way would it ever be quick enough unless they can transfer box to box and even then it's not going to be quick.

KIA · 2 Jul 2013 at 13:21

Let's share HDDs because there isn't an easier way to share copyrighted content.

d_brennen · 2 Jul 2013 at 13:27

It's not feasible, as failed drives are probably high on the list of problems that warrant a replacement box and sitting about waiting for 400GB of content to be transferred isn't a profitable use of "engineer" time.

They've made it a bit of a ball ache to get at the drive too, otherwise cloning to an image (assuming you have the space on your PC) and back to the new box might have been an option

robfosters · 3 Jul 2013 at 12:34

If it's on demand stuff, I cant see how it's much of a problem.

tom_e · 3 Jul 2013 at 12:38

I had a similar thing when Virgin swapped our TiVo boxes my housemate didn't talk to me for a day because I'd let them take his precious TiVo box with his recordings on even though I told him there's no way for them to swap them over.
He's a right ******* child sometimes :rolleyes: