Sky+ Box with 160 GB (Samsung)?
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I know there are many threads about upgrading the harddisk in the Sky+ Box.
But I want to have a discussion about harddisks with more than 120 GB.
Does the Sky+ Box accept 160 GB harddisks?
I know that there will be a problem with the display of free space on the Sky+ Planner, but I don't care about that. For me it is just important the the Box actually uses the 160 GB.
Also, I often read about Maxtor harddisks here in the forum. I heard from a friend that Maxtor harddisks are very loud. Is that true? As far as he told me Samsung harddisks are more quiet than Maxtor.
But I have never read of users who use a Samsung harddisk in the Sky+ Box. So it seems to me as if these harddisks are not suitable for the Sky+ Box. Is that true (loud and incompatible/not recommended)?
Thanks for any help!
BTW: I have a Box from Pace (V1?):
http://www.pace.co.uk/products/prodinfo.asp?PID=skyplus
But I want to have a discussion about harddisks with more than 120 GB.
Does the Sky+ Box accept 160 GB harddisks?
I know that there will be a problem with the display of free space on the Sky+ Planner, but I don't care about that. For me it is just important the the Box actually uses the 160 GB.
Also, I often read about Maxtor harddisks here in the forum. I heard from a friend that Maxtor harddisks are very loud. Is that true? As far as he told me Samsung harddisks are more quiet than Maxtor.
But I have never read of users who use a Samsung harddisk in the Sky+ Box. So it seems to me as if these harddisks are not suitable for the Sky+ Box. Is that true (loud and incompatible/not recommended)?
Thanks for any help!
BTW: I have a Box from Pace (V1?):
http://www.pace.co.uk/products/prodinfo.asp?PID=skyplus
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Comments
Damn, do we NEED a FAQ for this section or what?!?!?
NO NO NO.... You CANNOT get Sky+ to recognise more than 137Gb which means 120gb HD is the best we can do. To get more requires busting the ATA limit of 137Gb which probably means new hardware.
Just accept it... there is a limit and unless someone makes a 136.9gb drive then the limit is 120gb!!!!!!!! :mad:
what about the Samsung question?
Sorry but most threads have more than 4 pages to read and have all types of topics within the thread. I couldn't find information about it.
To answer your question: Yes, I DO think there should by an FAQ section for that. But not with merged threads about this topic but with a short and clear summary about the Sky+ Boxes.
e.g.
- Sky Box comes with 40 GB HD (about .... hours of recording)
- you can upgrade but maximum is 137 GB -> 120 GB HD
- mostly recommended is .... (Maxtor etc)
- currently no 17 min. bug
- etc...
Updates weekly and filled with information users frequently ask (especially new users).
No, I meant hardware as in the ATA controller on Sky+ isnt UDMA133 compatible and IIRC isnt 137Gb+ compatible.
But as to FAQ, I agree with your ideas. All we need is a Mod to get some text together and make it a sticky unlike those stickies we have which are quite boring and dated now... (IMHO!!)
I absolutely agree!!
a faq would be an advatage but the information is there you just have to search a bit ,but far better to spend a few mins looking than waste £60 on a duff drive
From what I remember the standard drive in the v2 is UDMA133 so there was some speculation a while ago that maybe the v2 will take a drive bigger than 120GB. I think there was some talk on the "Upgrade Hard Disk" thread of giving it a go, but don't know of anyone that did.
With todays announcement of the 160GB HDD version of Sky+ maybe there is a chance of the v2 taking something bigger as well?
Where do you get you information about Thomson/Pace karlg ?
As for Richard Mercers comments about what drives can Thomson get that Pace cant.
I agree, none. But Thomson will be the new supplier of sky+ as from October.
I cant confirm whether its this new 160 or the current Sky + V.2 which they will produce, maybe someone from south wales at the Thomson factory can confirm this
WIth the 1.31A8 software, I believe there is *no* false reporting of free % and *no* 17-minute bug.
I would (I need a new disk anyway) but if it doesn't work I have no use for it anywhere else!
Dave
But like many have pointed out even if it does work, the usable space on the drive would be 137GB.
I think any size limitation can be got around with clever software. I remember the old days when you had to run something in config.sys to access a full 10Gb
Dave
However, as Methanoid pointed out, there could well be fundamental hardware issues that would prevent us from using larger drives in existing Sky+ boxes.
ATA interfaces originally employed a 28-bit addressing sytem for data transfer between the operating system, BIOS, and hard drive.
This meant that a hard disk could only have a maximum of 2^28 or 268,435,456 sectors of 512 bytes. This put the ATA interface maximum at 128 GiB or approximately 137.4 GB
Hence the limit.
However, 48-bit addressing pushes the maximum storage limit to 144 petabytes.
Therefore it sounds like the new Sky+ boxes will be adhering to the new standard.
Question is, do any of the existing boxes (Pace V1, Pace V2 and Amstrad) meet those same specifications?
Personally I doubt it but would love to be proved wrong!
By the way, I thought the UDMA protocol simply referred to faster data transfer rates and not overall capacity?
I'm not certain but there is an issue with input two just after you install a new HD, dont remember exactly. Its more likely that this issue is your problem rather than the HD is not compatible. If you resovled that then filled the hard disc to 50%+ and all recordings played, that would be the ultimate answer.
I've recently bought a Dreambox (Linux based digital satellite receiver) and was interested to note that until earlier this year it too had a 137GB limit for it's hard drive. That has now changed and it can now support any currently available drive, including the Maxtor you tried. Note that this was a purely software change.
I believe that in principle a v2 or even a v1 box could support a larger disk drive I just don't see any good commercial reason for Sky investing the effort in upgrading the device driver for a discontinued product just to support an unoffical modification.
There is one good reason: If they can keep the OS the same on all Sky+ boxes it will be easier to maintain.
I'd still like to know the results of using a 160Gb or greater disk.
Dave
Windows XP SP1 will make no difference. I have tried copying data to a 160GB drive on an ATA-133 controller (recognised by windows fine) and everything goes well until the data is written past the 137GB barrier and then stops with an error message. Examining the disk then shows that all the data is corrupted (some folders appeared to contain hundreds of Terrabytes of data).
An ATA-33 controller cannot format a large (>137GB) disk though, and this may be why people are having no luck booting up with large disks. A search of the forum will show that someone tried a 160GB drive a while back in their Sky+ (after formatting on a PC) with it becoming corrupted at the 137GB point when recording.
This, and everything else is based upon information obtained prior to the latest software release.
Explain this to me: Why would sky bother changing the current versions of the Sky+, so that the space available/used is now accurate with larger disks and it seems they also fixed the 17mins bug, if they were going to abandon this model range and start afresh with a box with a larger disk (120/160)?
Dave