Amstrad DRX780 to 1.5Tb WD EVDS
Posted: Thu Mar 11, 2010 4:00 pm
Hi there,
I've completed the transfer from the stock 320Gb WD AVVS drive in the Amstrad Sky+HD DRX780 to a 1.5Tb Western Digital EVDS drive. http://www.ebuyer.com/product/187465. I used the alpha version of Copy+ 1.0.2.7 which pcbbc kindly supplied.
Taking the machine apart was surprisingly fiddly. I followed the excellent instructions at http://www.skyuser.co.uk/forum/sky-hd-s ... drive.html. I spotted that there are two plastic prongs sticking into the metal box from the plastic frame case, where the viewing card slot is, and so the metal box has to slide back a little bit further than I expected before it became possible to pull the metal inards up and out. That was the only hurdle I encountered. My box did not have torx screws.
I used an Akasa Duo Dock to connect the hard disks to my Dell Zino HD PC via esata. I was initially annoyed/worried when Windows 7 recognised the disk, installed drivers, assigned a drive letter and popped up the Autorun menu - I hope it didn't also decide to put Recycle Bin directories etc on the drive; it probably did if it assigned a drive letter. The transfer of a 9% free drive complete with a full cache of Anytime recordings, to an image file, took about 90 minutes via esata. Copy+ reported a size of 282Gb on the existing drive. The transfer back to the new 1.5Tb drive took 1 hour 18 minutes. I'd definitely recommend esata; I don't know how long that would have taken over USB.
The machine went back together a lot easier. The machine booted up fine although I was nervous as hell that the thing wouldn't work. But it did. The planner reports 89% free. Every existing user recording takes up 1% of the drive, which is nice - I recorded Star Trek The Undiscovered Country, which was either 5% or 8% on the stock drive, can't remember which now, but now it is 1%. Very refreshing not to have to worry about the space implications of a forthcoming recording!
With a 1,500Gb drive I am presuming the available space to me is 1,320Gb which is clearly a vast improvement on 180Gb. Although presumably actual formatted space will be lower. I just hope the assignment of a drive letter by Windows 7 didn't cause any adverse problems.
So many thanks for the fantastic Copy+ software and hopefully everything will be hunkydory going forward
I've completed the transfer from the stock 320Gb WD AVVS drive in the Amstrad Sky+HD DRX780 to a 1.5Tb Western Digital EVDS drive. http://www.ebuyer.com/product/187465. I used the alpha version of Copy+ 1.0.2.7 which pcbbc kindly supplied.
Taking the machine apart was surprisingly fiddly. I followed the excellent instructions at http://www.skyuser.co.uk/forum/sky-hd-s ... drive.html. I spotted that there are two plastic prongs sticking into the metal box from the plastic frame case, where the viewing card slot is, and so the metal box has to slide back a little bit further than I expected before it became possible to pull the metal inards up and out. That was the only hurdle I encountered. My box did not have torx screws.
I used an Akasa Duo Dock to connect the hard disks to my Dell Zino HD PC via esata. I was initially annoyed/worried when Windows 7 recognised the disk, installed drivers, assigned a drive letter and popped up the Autorun menu - I hope it didn't also decide to put Recycle Bin directories etc on the drive; it probably did if it assigned a drive letter. The transfer of a 9% free drive complete with a full cache of Anytime recordings, to an image file, took about 90 minutes via esata. Copy+ reported a size of 282Gb on the existing drive. The transfer back to the new 1.5Tb drive took 1 hour 18 minutes. I'd definitely recommend esata; I don't know how long that would have taken over USB.
The machine went back together a lot easier. The machine booted up fine although I was nervous as hell that the thing wouldn't work. But it did. The planner reports 89% free. Every existing user recording takes up 1% of the drive, which is nice - I recorded Star Trek The Undiscovered Country, which was either 5% or 8% on the stock drive, can't remember which now, but now it is 1%. Very refreshing not to have to worry about the space implications of a forthcoming recording!
With a 1,500Gb drive I am presuming the available space to me is 1,320Gb which is clearly a vast improvement on 180Gb. Although presumably actual formatted space will be lower. I just hope the assignment of a drive letter by Windows 7 didn't cause any adverse problems.
So many thanks for the fantastic Copy+ software and hopefully everything will be hunkydory going forward