PVR >> Sky+ Hard Drive UpgradeUpdated: See Temperature Controlled Fan Updated: See "Please Wait..." Issue IntroductionI have had a Pace V2 Sky+ receiver for a couple of years now. A 40GB hard drive was more than ample back then, but these days, it gets filled up so quickly, especially if you fail to stay up-to-date with viewing! Rather than spend the money on a new Sky+ receiver, I decided to upgrade the hard drive. After all, this Pace V2 has worked flawlessly since we bought it, so I wouldn't want to risk a new receiver being less reliable. Selecting a DriveProbably the most difficult part of the whole upgrade process is locating a suitable drive! Sure, there are a huge number of hard drives available these days, but most of them are designed for PCs. This means that they are designed to be fast; something that is not needed in a PVR. And with speed comes heat. PVRs are tight for space, and so installing a hard drive that is going to produce a lot of heat is a bad idea. In essence, a drive with a spin speed of 5,400rpm is going to be the best bet. Finding a suitable model was not difficult. There's a great thread over at Digital Spy in which users give their opinions on various drives. It's been going for a few years, so almost everything has been mentioned in there. After reading the last few pages, it was clear that the best drive of the time was the Samsung HA250JC. The best place to get one of these was said to be Ultratec, though they were out of stock at the time I wanted to order. However, at the time of writing, they appear to be back in stock. Luckily, I managed to find one on eBay. Old RecordingsSomething that probably puts a number of people off of upgrading is the thought of losing all those old recordings. Well now you don't have to, thanks to a fantastic utility called Copy+. You can either install both the old and new drives into a PC and use this utility, or, like I did, use a USB to IDE cable with a notebook. More information is available at the Copy+ website, but it really is extremely straightforward and works perfectly. InstallationThe drive arrived and I was ready to install, or so I thought. The screws on the rear (and inside) of the box are security screws. They look like torx screws, but there is a slight difference. Never mind; I managed to get a little security bit set off eBay for a couple of quid. I won't go through the whole process of installing the drive in great detail as it is well document elsewhere, most notably here. Ensure that you remove the power from the Sky+ receiver before opening it up. There are 3 screws holding the lid on. Remove these, then simply slide the lid back.
And you're in. The first thing to do is be careful of the internal power supply (left), just in case there's still some power lurking. There are 4 screws holding the drive to the cage; remove these. Be careful of the IDE cable and power cable. Again, remove these from the drive.
The drive is now out. The brackets need to be removed from this drive and transferred to the new drive. There are 2 screws on each side of the drive holding them on. Simply remove these, and transfer them to the new drive.
And here we have the new drive with the brackets installed.
Now is the time to transfer any old recordings with Copy+, as mentioned above. Once you've done this, it is simply a case of connecting the new drive to the power and IDE cables, and screwing it back in. You may notice some sticky pads; these are thermal pads, and you should quickly make sure that these line up with the chips on the new drive. These are there so that heat from the hard drive is transferred to the metal rack. And there we have it; as easy as that!
Get the lid back on, but perhaps don't put the screws back in until you've tested it. It is recommended that once back in to your Sky+ system that you perform housekeeping (almost like a Windows ScanDisk). To do this, press services, then 4, 0, 1, then select on your Sky+ remote. The box will reboot; wait for around 2 minutes then switch it back on and test. If everything is working, you can put the screws back in and enjoy a whole lot more space. Temperature Controlled Fan (Updated 02/03/2008)One issue with installing a different hard drive is that the fan may cease to be temperature controlled, and instead it will be permanently on. It is as a result of the Sky+ software not being able to read the temperature data from all hard drives, so it defaults to the fan running all the time. This can get get quite annoying... Thankfully, there is a solution. A guy called Darren Russell has created a device called the Sky+ fan controller that restores the normal operation of the fan, and gives you more control. You can set the temperature that the fan kicks in at as well as alter the fan speed. It's priced at £20 delivered, which at first you might think is expensive. But, when you consider the price of the parts, the fact that these take 2.5 hours to build and test, and that you get great support, it's a small price to pay. Installation is extremely easy, and there are instructions available on his website if you need them. At first, I did think it wasn't working, but it turned out that I was just expecting the fan to come on a lot earlier than it was set to. Once I'd adjusted the temperature control, and slowed the fan down a bit, it was working flawlessly.
I have now a 250GB Pace V2 Sky+ receiver with a temperature controlled fan. Great! "Please Wait..." IssueSince Sunday 23 November 2008, I started to experience an issue with my upgraded Pace V2 box, whereby entering the planner would throw up a "Please Wait..." message, which failed to disappear. The only way to resolve it was to power cycle the box. Unfortunately, after the box had been in standby, the same issue occurred again. I headed over to Digital Spy to find that I wasn't alone, and in fact the issue had been caused by a newly-installed Sky OS update. The full thread on the issue is available here. Sky have acknowledged the issue, and it will hopefully be resolved shortly. In the interim, I have found that disabling auto standby and not switching the box to standby stop the issue from occurring. Update (27/11/08): Sky have rolled back to the previous firmware version for the affected boxes. Questions or Comments?If you have any questions, comments, or feedback about this article, or indeed anything on my site, please do not hesitate to get in contact with me. |
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