Just getting the thread started off...

Sebby

You say about deleting the partion - is that easily achieved in Windows (XP Pro btw)?

Sorry for being dumb.....

Hi all, I wanted to start a new thread specifically to discuss HD upgrades, as with the new firmware I antimcipate I will be recording much more stuff weekly which will soon fill my drive.

I know this has been discussed on and off in the 'thread that wouldn't die', but I think it deserves it's own thread.

So, I would appreciate a quick summary from anyone who has successfully upgraded their HD, and any received wisdom.
Has anyone written a 'how-to'?

Is 120GB the max size?

Are folk swapping drives or leaving the old one and piggy-backing (to save voiding the warranty)?

Any drives that you recommend?

What speed 5400? 7200?

Thanks in advance for all the help.

Regards

Dave

You need to ZERO the MBR, no partitions, no info, I used another tool, from Aronis, but I think HUTIL will do a low format too.

"Zero the MBR" - I'm sorry old chap, I don't understand your banter...

I mentioned in another thread that the HUTIL thing doesn't recognise that any of the hard disks are Samsung - even though the BOTH are - so it won't let me do an erase.

Any idea on that Aronis tool thing, or how I'd "zero the MBR"?

Thanks

I found that just using FDISK to delete the partition/s on the drive worked fine. Just delete them and put the drive into the Thomson, and it will take care of the rest. Do make sure the drive is set to cable select though as otherwise it wont be recognised

http://dtt.opennet.co.uk/thomson.htm

I would suggest you start your quest by taking a look at the above site.

I have a seagate barrucuda 120gb - whisper quiet and works fine. no heat problems and is fast. no complaints here

OK, and is FDISK part of Win XP Pro? (I presume it's just run from a command window?)

I don't think you'll find Fdisk on XP Pro, so therefore i'd say your best bet would be to go to Bootdisk.com, download a disk (and put to floppy ) for win 98 or similar, put in your new drive and disconnect all others (to make sure you don't Fdisk the wrong drive) then reboot with the floppy in the drive and then run Fdisk from the A:.

think that should work for you.

Right, so I can download a Windows 98 bootdisk, copy it onto a floppy, disconnect all but the drive I want to fdisk, reboot (I presume this will load the W98 boot disk to a DOS prompt) and then run fdisk from the floppy?

I've (like others) have installed a Samsung 120Gb 7200rpm drive. That was about 2 months ago and having had any issues!

Regarding the Warranty Label - I found mine simply peeled back easily without leaving any marks or signs of tamper

The limit, as reported by cotman ages ago, appears to be 128GB. I doubt the new upgrade will change that.

I've used a 7200 RPM 160GB Seagate Baracuda (to get that last 8GB!) and it works like a dream.

You can lift the warranty sticker with a penknife - it's nothing clever.

The hardest part was getting the cover to slide off, mine required a fair bit of force.

I should just point out that if you dont know what FDISK is for or where it comes from, it might be wise to get a small child to help you. As using it without some knowledge of what you are doing can be catastrophic.

I'll make sure the PC's "real" hard drive is totally disconnected before trying any of this....

Energized by the update and with Christmas coming along with lots of TV to record, I've just popped along to my local PC world to get a hard disk. I came away with a 200Gb Seagate Barracuda ATA HD as choice was a little limited. I am planning to rip the package open and fit it over the weekend - after watching 15 hours of TV to finish the contents of the old disk!!!

But before doing that I was wondering if any kind person had words of warning about potential problems...over the size or anything else. No doubt it would be easy to return to the store in its sealed condition

Malcolm

Rik

Another thought. If you've had a chance to use your machine after the software update, do you think the adressing limit has changed? Are you seeing capacity up tp the full 160Gb or is it behaving the same as before.

Regards, malcolm

The old software apparently had a restriction on hard disk size of 137GB. You're probably not going to be able to use your remaining 63GB though it is possible that the update will fix it. I am almost certain that installing the new drive will backlevel your software to 0.31.0 or 0.30.5 again - it'll then get updated to 1.7.7 when that is next broadcast - maybe tonight. I'm not particularly confident that the update will allow > 137GB drives to be fully utilised - I suspect it's likely to be a hardware issue but it's also possible that it's fixable. You'll be the first to find out

It used to be true that the largest drive that could be fully used was a 120GB. Several people have fitted 160GB drives without apparent problems and these will not be using the last 23GB of the drive but you'd gain an extra 17GB (~4 hours) over the 120GB variety.

Others have said that you need to jumper your new drive as 'cable select'. Do not assume that the jumper positions on the new drive will match the ones on the old drive, look at the manual or web site for the product and find out what the jumpers mean for both the old drive and the new one and then set the correct ones on the new one to mimick the settings on the old.

I would like to confirm what trevorPH says about jumpers, I got it wrong when I first installed my samsung 160gb; I had to take the drive out, stick it in an old PC, erase the mbr, get the jumpers set correctly, refix in the thom.. which then saw the extra capacity. The drive has worked flawlessly for the last four months.

I upgraded to a Segate 160GB 8MB cache drive today and the software version is still 1.7.7.

The only thing that has been lost is the old recording history, record list and the EPG.


There are a few things I'd like to note about the upgrade.

1. The noise level is the same as before the upgrade.

2. The warentee sticker on the disc caddy case screw is easily pealed back.

3. The screws that hold the front of the case need to be released to enabel the disc caddy to come free.

4. The screws that hold the case front have somthing that looks like tipex correction fluid painted across them and the panel into which the are screwed. When i reinserted and tightened the screws, the white marks on the screws and hole didn't match. Beware if you intend to do a warrentee return.

5. I placed a layer off rubber between the disc caddy screws and the case and board, to try and reduce the fan noise, but the noise level from the fan is the same as before.

6. The new hard drive is deeper than the origional drive and fills the drive caddy perfectly. The caddy was obviously designed with the larger capacity drives in mind.

Oh, good, that's very useful. I thought the updates were stored on the disk but they must be purely flash then.

I can hear my Thomson more since the software update. The drive heads make a soft clicking sound while it's busy now where it just whirred before (fan + disk noise). Still not disturbing but...

Any reason why a 8mb cache drive should be better than a 2mb cache drive in this application? Just asking as I can get a 2mb cache drive much cheaper

Regards

Paul

Check the warranty on the drive. Most 8MB cache versions have a 3 or 5 year warranty where some 2MB versions have only 1 year. It's also possible that you may be able to reduce the seeking noises by having a drive with a larger cache since.

I think you can't really go wrong with the 2MB cache. Day-to-day real-time operations (i.e. viewing and making recordings) will be identical and any other differences will be minimal. For example, there may be some difference in efficiency when it generates scenes but it probably won't be noticeable.

It's probably not worth paying extra for 8MB unless the price difference is minimal.

Trevor, glad to say, this is not so, the SW must be in some kind of CMOS on the board. I 're'-graded to an older HD to do some archiving and the SW version running was still the same. Obviously the box was unplugged for about 5 mins ( i have the lid off and the drive caddy un-screwed at the moment...) so was a COLD start for the system and it came up with 1.7.7. Confirmed this by doing a recording and using 'cahse-play' whilst still recording.