hard drive capacity

[Deleted User] · 14/09/06 - 08:59

I have recently had sky HD fitted and i am rather disappointed to find that the hard drive willnot hold as much recorded material as i thought it would. I find that if i record a film in HD it can and does use up nearly 7% of my available space.

I believe the hard drive is partitioned so that sky can use the second part of the drive for future projects. Is there any way of accessing some or all of the partitioned drive or alternatively can a stand alone hard drive be added.

Your help will be gratefully received.

Thanks

Huw

loz · 14/09/06 - 09:02

hoopey wrote:

I have recently had sky HD fitted and i am rather disappointed to find that the hard drive willnot hold as much recorded material as i thought it would. I find that if i record a film in HD it can and does use up nearly 7% of my available space.

I believe the hard drive is partitioned so that sky can use the second part of the drive for future projects. Is there any way of accessing some or all of the partitioned drive or alternatively can a stand alone hard drive be added.

No.
No. Not yet at least. The SATA port isn't enabled, and Sky haven't announced any plans to do so.

Nigel Goodwin · 14/09/06 - 09:04

hoopey wrote:

I have recently had sky HD fitted and i am rather disappointed to find that the hard drive willnot hold as much recorded material as i thought it would. I find that if i record a film in HD it can and does use up nearly 7% of my available space.

I believe the hard drive is partitioned so that sky can use the second part of the drive for future projects. Is there any way of accessing some or all of the partitioned drive or alternatively can a stand alone hard drive be added.

You can fit a larger internal drive (see the long running thread here about it), but the external Sata port isn't enabled yet (assuming it ever will be?).

However, Sky have never claimed it's got 300Gb recording space, only that it has 160Gb.

[Deleted User] · 14/09/06 - 09:33

Nigel Goodwin wrote:

You can fit a larger internal drive (see the long running thread here about it), but the external Sata port isn't enabled yet (assuming it ever will be?).

However, Sky have never claimed it's got 300Gb recording space, only that it has 160Gb.

True, but although because of this people cannot claim to have been MIS-SOLD HD, I think a lot of non techie people didnt quite realise how little 160gb was when recording HD content.
Must admit I was somewhat surprised myself just how quickly I could fill the disk.
Admittedly I was using an upgraded Sky+ which basically let me archive programmes for months if I so desired without ever giving me a problem with disk space. I now find that if I am recording lots of HD content (Enterprise and SG-1 every day) that the disk fills faster than I can keep up with it.
Yes you heard me - Theres TOO MUCH HD CONTENT

I kid of course.
Been putting off upgrading hte HD Disk to see if it caused people any problems (the ghost of the imfamous 17 min bug still haunts me). But I think I will have to just bite the bullet and go for it. (Whats the worst that can happen right

)

[Deleted User] · 14/09/06 - 09:52

Lack of disk space on the HD is the main reason I kept my sky+250 (in the lounge next to it). I had calculated that 6 or 7 football matches in HD would fill the disk,

Since then I have updated to a 500gb drive (giving me 360gb for my use) as I was eating up the HD drive too quickly.

Sky were definitely advertising 300gb drive when HD was originally offered for pre-order.

tezza71 · 14/09/06 - 19:11

it is 300 gb 160gb in use now with 140 locked for future use as mentioned by other members

Nigel Goodwin · 14/09/06 - 19:43

tezza71 wrote:

it is 300 gb 160gb in use now with 140 locked for future use as mentioned by other members

Yes, the 140Gb is reserved for Sky use - presumably for PPV on demand or similar?.

[Deleted User] · 14/09/06 - 20:26

Thought I was managing until both my boxes recorded Jools Holland last weekend at 447min and ate half the prerecorded disk space-pants!

[Deleted User] · 15/09/06 - 08:14

rentagas wrote:

Thought I was managing until both my boxes recorded Jools Holland last weekend at 447min and ate half the prerecorded disk space-pants!

I thought that the idea of the integrated hard disc was for use as a temporary programme storage. I copy any recorded material that I want to keep on to DVD--(for my own use of course!) thus continually freeing up space on the Sky box. Problem sorted.

Nigel Goodwin · 15/09/06 - 09:02

freddieboy wrote:

I thought that the idea of the integrated hard disc was for use as a temporary programme storage. I copy any recorded material that I want to keep on to DVD--(for my own use of course!) thus continually freeing up space on the Sky box. Problem sorted.

Except you can't copy it in HD!.

[Deleted User] · 15/09/06 - 09:37

Most of the stuff I lost I already have recorded from the SD source. The HD signal and DD soundtrack can't be recorded and even recorded on DVD at 4.7GB per hour (as Mpeg2) it looks poor and sounds poor in comparison. I was archiving stuff until an affordable solution came about or until the Seagate DB35 750GB drive (as opposed to the noisier Barracuda drive) became available. Now the BBC/Sky have solved my problem for me by deleting half my storage!

TaylorWJ · 15/09/06 - 13:00

As the Sky HD team are monitoring these forums please consider releasing some of the reserved disc space and / or enable the external drive port.

Your copy protection system should prevent HD and DD sound abuses. Given you had 160GBytes in Sky + why did you expect 160 to be enough for HD?

The box is used for SD and HD timeshifts.

Hey there!

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