| Suggested Hard Drives for Sky+ and SkyHD Upgrades... You will find below a list of drives that have been used for various Sky+ upgrades. Some useful resources if you are considering an upgrade is Automan's Sky+ site and the DigitalSpy Upgrade FAQ. You will probably also want to be trying out my Copy+ software :) Please note that I maintain this list in good faith, but that I am not personally recommending any of the drives on this list, nor am I recommending any of the sources of supply. You use any information on this page entirely at your own risk and judgment. This information is provided entirely "as is", and has been gathered from various posts on the DigitalSpy Sky+ Forums and from feedback from various people using my Copy+ software. Please do not contact me asking which drive I would recommend - I do not have any other details other than provided here. If you have a drive you would like to add to the list, that you have actually tried and tested, please drop me a mail via the Copy+ web site. Please remember to tell me the size of drive, manufacturer, exact model and a source of purchase, as well as you make of Sky+ box. Without all of these details the information you supply will be next to useless. If you are going to try a drive that is not on this list, try to choose one designed for Consumer Electronics (CE) or Audio Visual (AV) use. These are designed and tuned specifically for use in PVRs and the like and almost always perform better than their desktop counterparts. * Please note that Pace V1 Sky+ boxes on EPG version 4.10c can not be upgraded. This is because the firmware released by Sky contains code which prevents the box from booting with an upgraded drive installed. Version 4.20a of the firmware is now available, which again allows drive upgrades on the Pace V1 box. Sky+ Upgrades (80 - 250GB)
Sky+ Upgrades (300GB - 500GB) As of 8 September 2007 it seems that either EPG 4.10 or 4.20 may have removed the 270GB upper limit on FSR. The limit on supported drive size now appears to be 1TB with the box natively formatting drives up to and including 500GB (i.e. Same as Sky HD boxes).
Sky+ Upgrades (Above 500GB) The following drives should be considered strictly experimental. You probably will not be able to do a Full System Reset on these disks to initialise them for use in your Sky+ box. Instead you will have to use Copy+ to copy from a smaller drive, or limit the capacity of the disk to somewhere below 500GB.
Sky+ Upgrade SATA Drive Experiment The following drives are SATA drives, unsuitable for use without a separate PATA motherboard to SATA drive adapter board. For example this board available from various sellers on e-Bay. Another user reports success with this board in a Pace V3 box, although there are significant problems if the box is put into standby - a never ending"Please Wait" on attempting to turn back on. Our assumption is this is probably more down to the choice of drive than the adapter board itself. Another advantage of this board is its design, which allows mounting on the back of the drive without the need for resoldering of connectors or additional Molex power spliters and converters. Use of SATA drives in Sky+ boxes is still highly experimental, however my Pace V1 box has been running successfully since 18th February 2007 using such a combination. Good luck if you decide to try one! Update September 2007 - Here are some pictures (1, 2, 3) of my slightly modifed PATA/SATA board where I have resoldered the SATA plug and bent the power plug so that the lid still fits on the Pace V1 box. Update March 2009 - SATA PATA board still going strong, and just switched to using theHitachi HDS721010KLA330 on a regular basis - Wish me luck! Here is a picture of the board and cabling required in the Pace V1 box.
 = Successful report of upgrade from at least 1 source. = Unknown at this time. Please post you results if you try this drive. = Known not to work or gives poor results.SkyHD Upgrades (500GB)
SkyHD Upgrades (750GB+) Sky HD can not correctly Full System Reset drives over 500GB (You will be left with a drive formatted to some capacity below 507GB). Drives above 500GB require initialisation with Copy+.
= Successful report of upgrade from at least 1 source. = Unknown at this time. Please post you results if you try this drive. = Mixed reports. = Known not to work or gives poor results.* = Please note that the Samsung box seems very fussy about what types of drive it does and does NOT like. |
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