At some point in the future ( maybe by the end of the summer) - I am considering upgrading the disk - I am not sure which is better, is it better to get the external SATA drive caddy or stick with an internal swap? What is the advantage of going external? Especially in speed of transfer times?

Would the speed of data transfer be any faster if for example I wanted to copy a HD file to a second drive for storage through the USB connection? I don't like the thought of spending hours transfering a single HD file if I can make it faster I would be happier..

Any thoughts?

Patrick

I'd like to add to this. Am also considering an internal upgrade. Obviously there is a thread on here about specifically that, but after reading this quite a bit, I find it difficult to understand which HDD would work best, and they're a reasonable expense to buy.

Assuming a 1Tb upgrade, can those who have successfully swapped out and kept all of the features (low noise, standby, speed) of the existing disk let us know where their money went.

Thanks,

J

I thought I remembered people saying the transfer speeds were very slow and if thats the case, the internal upgrade would be best.

I was hoping that with the time it taking for this software update, that the network port will be made active.

I gave up on transferring HD programmes from the HDR to the external drive because of the time involved plus if the HD programme is encrypted even with the BBC copy once encryption then the external files will not play back thought the HDR from the external HDD unless it’s recorded in non-FreeSat mode.

That said you can copy the files back to the HDR and the files will play from the HDRs HDD.

I think people are getting confused on the transfer speeds here with the different ways of archiving to "External Disk".

There are a number of ways of upgrading & archiving.:-

1. The "easiest" way is just sticking an external USB HDD into one of the HDR's USB ports. The existing disk is left in place & used for recordings. The external disk is just used for archiving, and is extremely slow via USB.

2. An straight internal upgrade of the existing HDD to say a 1TB. The recommended drives used to be Western Digital CE drives with no error correction. The current version (1TB) is this WD10EVDS. They also do 1.5 & 2TB, but I don't think anyone has tried these sizes. If you want to get files off the HDR, you are still confined to USB and still very slow.

3. You can do the son_t eSata loop mod, with or without a disk upgrade. Basically this brings an esata interface out of the box, but is looped back to the internal disk for normal use. When you need to get files off the internal disk, you can use a Linux PC to directly access the internal HDD, very fast.

4. You can do the normal eSata Mod , and replace the internal HDD with an external esata HDD Caddy, then use either the existing disk, or a new higher capacity HDD (say the WD 1TB), in the caddy. Again, you can then use a Linux PC to access this disk directly for very quick transfers. There has been some discussion of putting the empty disk internal caddy back in the HDR, with its fan, to aid cooling.

All internal mods will, of course invalidate the warranty.

Rgds.


Les.

Very nice summary of the options thank you Les . 1 or 2 more questions though - I believe there are utilities that will read linux files, ext2? on a Windows machine) can't remember offhand the names).

Could you equally use a utility like that to read the files directly from the box into a windows directory and then further process in windows? Or would a linux livecd (or partition) be definitely better? Effectively how do I get it into windows with least pain?

Is the linux intermediary step essential?

Patrick

Patrick,

I have only, currently, needed to to use an external USB HDD formatted to ext3, as I timeshift most of my viewing, I don't have a long term archival need. My HDR HDD is currently only 17% full , yet we record lots of progs each day.

So, with that caveat of no personal experience of the internal mods in mind :-

The ext2 IFS for Windows driver, here, should work. However, ext3 (the HDR filesystem) is a journalling system, and as the HDR doesn't unmount the USB HDD properly, I haven't had much success with this in Windows.

It's really easy to boot my laptop up using a Live Slax bootable CD. The UI is very intuitive and easy, it's drag & drop just like Windows. Then when the file is on the laptop, you can bootup Windows and do what you like with the file.

Rgds.


Les.

I thought I'd post some pics now I received my external case - I decided to go external this time - all working fine (although see below as I had some cabling problems):

As I thought, the black and chrome casing goes well with the cinema gear and hides well also (I've got it behind the right hand lower piller in the photo):

http://img5.imageshack.us/img5/4830/cimg0791a.jpg


A close up shot here taken around the pillar from floor level shows how smart it looks (although I've chosen to hide it behind the pillar for normal viewing):

http://img17.imageshack.us/img17/2918/cimg0793t.jpg

Ok the problem I had was with the cabling. I bought a SATA to eSATA cable 2m from Scan as suggested by the wiki as it was neater than the bracket solution. However, I soon discovered that eSATA uses thicker cable and bigger plugs. Although the cable wasn't a problem, the plugs were too big to thread through the hole in the bottom of the Humax. After a quick search of the internet only turned up an adapter in the US, and the cable was of no use to me otherwise anyway, I decided on drastic action and got out the stanley knife. I carefully shaved the SATA plug down in width on both top and bottom until it was much thinner. It then fitted through the hole threaded around the base of the hard drive caddy (towards the front of the Humax at the base there's a cut out of the hard drive caddy to accommodate a power cable that runs from the power board to the motherboard - there's room to thread the cable through here and theres space by the stand off on the other side to thread it out there), through the retainer on the nearby stand off and into the SATA plug on the motherboard.

This is the case BTW: http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/AKASA...ports-upto-1TB!!

All my files previously recorded onto my 1TB drive function properly and Humax booted 1st attempt, 2nd switch on - (front button) (1st switch on attempt resulted in a power loss recovery cycle not a boot).