PVR1 (version 9F2006) HDD upgrade question

Which replacement drives can you use and which do people recommend?

PVR1 (version 9F2006) HDD upgrade question

Postby zork42 » Thu Dec 13, 2007 5:32 pm

Hi!

I have a PVR1, and I want to upgrade my HDD.

I've read through a lot of SURVEY: Sky+ Upgrade Hard Disks, and I've looked at http://www.geocities.com/skypluswss/hdd.htm and it looks like the 250 GB drives that are known to work are either discontinued or expensive.

Do you have any idea if any 500 GB drives are likely to work as they are cheaper than the old 250 GB drives.

After Christmas I might play around with a 1 TB SATA drive, but for now I just want a reliable drive for the chrissy films. ;)

===

Or would it be safer for me to just go for the 1 TB SATA option now?

If so, which PATA/SATA card should I buy from http://www.span.com/catalog/index.php?cPath=28_1206 ?

And do you have any idea which 1 TB drive would be best?
I've been reading http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/samsung-o ... 29767.html
(Drive Surface Temperature and Power Consumption info is on this page: http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/samsung-o ... 67-10.html )
and it looks like the best bet would be one of these 2:

1. Samsung - Spinpoint F1 HD103UJ = fastest, and low-ish power consumption and cool running due to just 3 platters
2. Western Digital - Caviar GP WD10EACS = slower, but even lower power consumption and even cooler running

The Samsung is £211.49, and the WD is £176.43 at www.cclonline.com

Sorry if I'm asking dumb questions but I'm suffering from complete information overload, and I can't think straight any more!

Thanks in advance for any help or advice!


My PVR1 info:

Code: Select all
Manufacturer              Pace
Model Number              4.012
Version Number            9F2006
Operating System Version  1.31B02
EPG Software Version      sky+ 4.20.a
zork42
 

Re: PVR1 (version 9F2006) HDD upgrade question

Postby pcbbc » Thu Dec 13, 2007 6:32 pm

zork42 wrote:Do you have any idea if any 500 GB drives are likely to work as they are cheaper than the old 250 GB drives.
All Sky+ boxes now support up to 500Gb drives natively, and up to 1TB when using Copy+.

Or would it be safer for me to just go for the 1 TB SATA option now?
The SATA option is still quite risky at the moment. I only tried it as an experiment, so I would not want to recommend it as a guaranteed upgrade route.
Having said that, my V1 box has been very reliable and stable with whatever drive I put in it - Unlike my Pace V2, which seems more fussy (for example it won't work with any SATA drive).

If so, which PATA/SATA card should I buy from http://www.span.com/catalog/index.php?cPath=28_1206 ?
There are pictures of the one I used on the Suggested Drives Page: 1, 2, and 3.

For best chances of success I recommend using the same board. Sorry, but I can't say which bridge chip set it uses (perhaps I should peel the label off and look).

And do you have any idea which 1 TB drive would be best?
Personally I went with the Hitachi Deskstar and, from the limited testing I did in the V1, it seemed to work fine.
No experience of the other drives, so I can't really recommend one over the other.

As I said this was an experiment for me, and I'm happy for others to do the same - as long as they understand the risks.
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Re: PVR1 (version 9F2006) HDD upgrade question

Postby zork42 » Fri Dec 14, 2007 12:15 pm

Thanks for the quick reply :)

pcbbc wrote:
zork42 wrote:Do you have any idea if any 500 GB drives are likely to work as they are cheaper than the old 250 GB drives.
All Sky+ boxes now support up to 500Gb drives natively, and up to 1TB when using Copy+.


Oops. What I meant to ask was:
Do you know of any specific 500 GB drives that will probably/definitely work in a PVR1?
(The only info I could find about known-to-work drives was about 250 GB drives that are hard/impossible to source and/or more expensive than 500 GB drives.)
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Re: PVR1 (version 9F2006) HDD upgrade question

Postby pcbbc » Fri Dec 14, 2007 12:40 pm

zork42 wrote:Oops my question wasn't very clear. What I meant to ask was:
Do you know of any specific 500 GB drives that will probably/definitely work in a PVR1?
(The only info I could find about known-to-work drives was about 250 GB drives that are hard/impossible to source and/or more expensive than 500 GB drives.)
Sorry, No.

For my PVR1 I personally have a couple of known to work 300GB (one old Maxtor PATA and a relatively new Samsung SATA). The only drive larger than that is a 1TB Hitachi Deskstar and that is a SATA drive via a a PATA to SATA adapter card.

Having said that, my PVR1 seems very tolerant of disk upgrades these days. I've yet to find a drive that doesn't work, including numerous SATA drives.

Remember that over 507Gb requires the use of Copy+, or you'll get a funny formatted capacity.
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Re: PVR1 (version 9F2006) HDD upgrade question

Postby zork42 » Fri Dec 14, 2007 12:57 pm

Thanks for the speedy reply!
(I'm trying to sort a drive out today if possible.)

pcbbc wrote:For my PVR1 I personally have a couple of known to work 300GB (one old Maxtor PATA and a relatively new Samsung SATA).


Which drives were they?
The 300 GB Maxtor PATA might be cheaper and easier to get hold of than the 250 GB HDDs.

Re the 1TB Hitachi Deskstar SATA drive you've been using... does it work OK under "stressful" conditions? eg dual record + playback of a 3rd stream at 30x ?
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Postby zork42 » Fri Dec 14, 2007 1:23 pm

Sorry for all the following questions. Please ignore this post if you want to. ;)

Any idea why some drives work and others don't? Most people seem to think its one of:

1. slow spin up time - seems unlikely as you'd think the code would just wait for the first read/write to finish

2. different features / command sets in different drives - again seems unlikely as you'd think Sky would write the code to use standard features/command sets so allowing the manufacturers to source the cheapest possible drives when they bulk-buy a load just prior to building the latest batch of Sky+s

The only likely reason I can think of is maybe the Sky+ PSU is unable to provide sufficient power for energy-hungry drives.
Does that seem likely?

Maybe most drives work in the PVR1 because its PSU is over-spec'd as it was the first version?

========

Do you think it would be possible to keep the drive in a standard external HDD enclosure with a SATA interface; and connect a SATA cable between the external enclosure and a SATA-to-PATA card inside the Sky+?
Could then use the external enclosure's PSU, which would reduce the stress on the Sky+'s PSU, and probably would keep the whole Sky+ cooler and extend its life.
It might even keep the drive cooler too.

For me this would be a good setup as I could easily get at the drive without opening the Sky+. This would make it easier to make backups, and maybe in the future try new drives.


Again, sorry for all the questions.
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Re: PVR1 (version 9F2006) HDD upgrade question

Postby pcbbc » Fri Dec 14, 2007 1:23 pm

zork42 wrote:Which drives were they?
The 300 GB Maxtor PATA might be cheaper and easier to get hold of than the 250 GB HDDs.
The 300GB drive was a 5A300J0, the higher capacity brother of the excellent (but long since discontinued) 5A250J0 5400rpm drive.
Also a 250GB SATA Hitachi HDT725025VLA380.

Re the 1TB Hitachi Deskstar SATA drive you've been using... does it work OK under "stressful" conditions? eg dual record + playback of a 3rd stream at 30x ?
Can't say I gave it more than a five minute once over, I'm afraid.

I needed it to do some recovery work for someone with a HD box with a 1TB drive fitted - I restored a copy of their disk from an image. While doing that I ran a few quick tests, some of which involved dual recording. Everything seemed fine.

Can't say it got a through testing, unlike the Samsung SATA drive I used. That was in my main box and received day-in, day-out use for many months without a single problem - as good as a native PATA drive in my opinion.
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Postby zork42 » Fri Dec 14, 2007 1:25 pm

Thanks I'll check availability on those drives.

(I just cross-posted with your reply, in case you missed it.)
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Postby pcbbc » Fri Dec 14, 2007 4:28 pm

zork42 wrote:Any idea why some drives work and others don't?
Sorry, no idea - just theories like everyone else.

1. slow spin up time
Used to be assumed to be the problem with 7200 drives, but the software has improved to fix this. May still be a problem for some drives with very long spin up times.

2. different features / command sets in different drives.
Most drives have fairly standard feature sets. Could be down to response time, or slightly differing responses to various commands. Again though would seem unlikely as drives should conform to ATA standards.

The only likely reason I can think of is maybe the Sky+ PSU is unable to provide sufficient power for energy-hungry drives.
I did hear one report of that, so it may be possible.
Using an external power supply might work round it, but it didn't help me with my SATA drives on the Pace PVR2.

Do you think it would be possible to keep the drive in a standard external HDD enclosure with a SATA interface; and connect a SATA cable between the external enclosure and a SATA-to-PATA card inside the Sky+?
Don't see why not - but not done it myself. People did this with the HD box to an external RAID array running 2x500GB drives.
The other reasons you mention for wanting to do this would all seem valid too.

I know people on the forums have run PATA drives in "external" mode before. Although the cable length is sometimes an issue (less so with SATA).
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Re: PVR1 (version 9F2006) HDD upgrade question

Postby AvidHotstuff » Tue Dec 18, 2007 3:00 pm

zork42 wrote:
Re the 1TB Hitachi Deskstar SATA drive you've been using... does it work OK under "stressful" conditions? eg dual record + playback of a 3rd stream at 30x ?


I have mine installed for over a month now and whilst recording 2 programmes and watching another recorded , it is failry noisey , it has had no problems at all.
I haven't seen one recording fail.
And i have only 45% free. :lol:
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Re: PVR1 (version 9F2006) HDD upgrade question

Postby pcbbc » Tue Dec 18, 2007 3:12 pm

AvidHotstuff wrote:
zork42 wrote:
Re the 1TB Hitachi Deskstar SATA drive you've been using... does it work OK under "stressful" conditions? eg dual record + playback of a 3rd stream at 30x ?


I have mine installed for over a month now and whilst recording 2 programmes and watching another recorded , it is failry noisey , it has had no problems at all.
I haven't seen one recording fail.
And i have only 45% free. :lol:
Yes, but in a native SATA SkyHD box and not in a Pace V1 with a PATA to SATA adapter.
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Re: PVR1 (version 9F2006) HDD upgrade question

Postby AvidHotstuff » Tue Dec 18, 2007 3:15 pm

pcbbc wrote:
AvidHotstuff wrote:
zork42 wrote:
Re the 1TB Hitachi Deskstar SATA drive you've been using... does it work OK under "stressful" conditions? eg dual record + playback of a 3rd stream at 30x ?


I have mine installed for over a month now and whilst recording 2 programmes and watching another recorded , it is failry noisey , it has had no problems at all.
I haven't seen one recording fail.
And i have only 45% free. :lol:
Yes, but in a native SATA SkyHD box and not in a Pace V1 with a PATA to SATA adapter.


oops my bad.
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Postby zork42 » Wed Dec 19, 2007 6:27 am

After much deliberation I've decided to try this drive:
Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 500GB U100 (quicklinx:44FHWS | mfr#:ST3500630A)
I'll let you know how I get on!

I ordered 2 of these:
Akasa 3.5" ESATA ENCLOSURE (quicklinx:4QTNWS | mfr#:AK-ENP2SATA-BKU)
They do not have a fan. Do you think that will be OK?

Thanks
zork42
 

Postby pcbbc » Wed Dec 19, 2007 10:47 am

zork42 wrote:After much deliberation I've decided to try this drive:
Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 500GB U100 (quicklinx:44FHWS | mfr#:ST3500630A)
I'll let you know how I get on!

I ordered 2 of these:
Akasa 3.5" ESATA ENCLOSURE (quicklinx:4QTNWS | mfr#:AK-ENP2SATA-BKU)
They do not have a fan. Do you think that will be OK?

Thanks
Umm, interesting choice.
So you'll be going PATA Sky+ box -> SATA cable -> External PATA drive!
You'll also have the option of mounting natively internally if you choose.

It will certainly be interesting to see the results!
Don't know about not having a fan - Obviously good from the noise point of view, but all depends how hot the Seagate runs. They can get quite hot if it's a sealed enclosure.
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Postby zork42 » Thu Dec 20, 2007 8:57 am

pcbbc wrote:So you'll be going PATA Sky+ box -> SATA cable -> External PATA drive!


Nope, that's too scary!
The 2 Akasa 3.5" eSATA enclosures are for copying the data from my old HDD to the new one.
Although they're called eSATA enclosures they are actually for PATA and SATA drives and can operate in these 3 ways:
1. PATA HDD --> USB 2
2. SATA HDD --> USB 2
3. SATA HDD --> eSATA
(I'll be using "1. PATA HDD --> USB 2" to copy the data.)

Initially I'll put the HDD inside the Sky+ and see how that goes.
I'd like easy access to the HDD for backup purposes (and maybe +extract), so I'll probably eventually try games with an external enclosure, a PATA-->SATA converter, and maybe a bigger disk.

pcbbc wrote:Don't know about not having a fan - Obviously good from the noise point of view, but all depends how hot the Seagate runs. They can get quite hot if it's a sealed enclosure.


By "they" do you mean HDDs in general, or the Seagate HDD specifically?
All the enclosures that do not have a fan say things like "Sleek aluminium body enables efficient heat dissipation" (from Akasa 3.5" eSATA enclosure blurb). It'd be nice if they said something more useful like "HDD will typically run just x degrees hotter".
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