I currently seem to be constantly filling my Humax 9150. I'm happy with the machine, not too worried about HD or anything like that so just want to upgrade the hard drive rather than get a whole new PVR.

Although I consider myself to be quite computer savvy, reading around this is completely over my head!

In terms of the hard drive. I have read I need SATA and that ideally it should be a hard drive optimised for a PVR. I was thinking of the Western Digital AV-GP WD5000AVDS here. Would this be suitable? Or does anyone know of any (preferably slightly cheaper) alternatives?

In terms of fitting the hard drive - I found this video for upgrading the 9200. I presume this would be the same process? I also like how it has the rack so that I can watch my old recordings by swapping hard drives - would this rack be compatible as I can't find the one in the video description?

Thanks in advance and feel free to offer any alternatives as I am completely clueless on this!

Best two ways to identify a compatible harddrive for your 9150T is either to buy one that is from the same drive series as the one already fitted, or to google for reports where people have had success with either a 9150T or 9300T.

The cabling for an external drive will be different with your 9150T than for a 9200T.

An alternative to removing the hard drive altogether would be the esata cable mod which is the same as the foxsat mod described at http://foxsatdisk.wikispaces.com/eSATA+loop+mod

An alternative is to transfer recording from the old small SATA to your new larger SATA drive via a PC using humaxrw.
Details of humaxrw are at http://humaxdisk.wikispaces.com/HumaxRW

I went ahead and bought the drive I posted about. I'm away from home so couldn't open my Humax to see what was inside. This is one of these things where I have a few days off to get it done so I know if I leave it any longer I'll never do it. Worst comes to worst I'll return it.

I had a look at that website and it seems way over my head to be honest. In terms of my understanding (although probably the most complicated method), the upgrade should go as follows?

1. Open Humax and remove old drive
2. Put new drive into Humax and let it format
3. Use a SATA to USB cable to connect old drive to laptop and take files off using HumaxRW
4. Transfer recordings from old drive to new drive using SATA to USB cable and HumaxRW.
5. Plug in new drive with the recordings now on it to humax

That sounds too simple so I'm probably missing some glaringly obvious steps?

I might be talking out my back end here but I thought the 9150/9300 used a 2.5" drive, the one you link to is a 3.5" drive. Maybe someone will confirm or otherwise.

I'm afraid you are!

Oh lord lmao well that's what I get for not opening it! Back to the seller (and the drawing board!)

Thanks for letting me know.

But I think my friend coulrophobe is saying I am talking out my back end, so I'm wrong.

I am reasonably sure (but not absolutely certain) that it is a "3.5" drive.

I see, that's a good thing then, phew!


Thanks, I think you may be right actually, just found a post on another forum where someone had used a 3.5" to upgrade their 9150.

Hopefully my my 5 step process above works then!

The 5 steps sound right to me.

Thanks. Fingers crossed!

I've just found a post on AV Forums that says the original drive is a WD AV-GP which is a 3.5" drive, sorry for giving you a scare.

No worries, I found that post also just after you had posted. I picked the WD AVGP before I'd seen that post as it looked to be everything I need anyway so well happy that's exactly the type that's actually in it!

Is there a capacity limit?

Not strictly but there is a limit of 511 on the number of recordings and personally I wouldn't see the point in going bigger than say 750MB.

Well just to report back that everything has seemed to go to plan - fingers crossed! The disk in the 9150 was actually a Seagate and not a WD (presumably this is one of the older 9150s and the newer ones have the WD?).

The disk is very quiet, I would say it has probably about half the noise of the Seagate. The box also seems snappier, although that could be simply due to the fact I did a default settings also, or could just be psychological.

Humax RW Front End was excellent to use to save doing any command line messing about.

I just wish I had have done this sooner, I would say my box has been between 90-100% full for over a year now and the thoughts of replacing the hard drive being complicated is what put me off. This will definitely save me time rearranging recordings when the box has been too full to record them!

Thanks for all the help!

Well apparently all didn't go to plan. Just now the box turned itself off and back on again randomly when I was trying to delete a recording. It's wiped about half the recordings, starting with the older ones. It looks like it has possibly wiped those that I transferred to the new drive from the old drive, with the recordings straight on to the Humax from the TV after replacing still there.

The wiped recordings are in the list but just won't play. Looks like they have definitely been wiped though as the capacity has increased about 20% on the hdd screen.

Needless to say I'm not happy but hopefully now that it's deleted them and the recordings left are those actually recorded once the drive was fitted, it won't do anything like this again.