I upgraded to a Samusng 120gb (low noise unit). You can download a utility from the samsung web-site which allows you to set the 'efficiency' of the drive. If you accept a lower performance level, then the noise level also drops DRAMATICALLY. I almost never here the drive mechanics anymore, only occasionally when doing 2 recordings or 1 recording plus one play-back.

Happened to put the original disk in yesterday and it must be at least 4 times as noisy. I haven't even screwed the caddy down yet which will also reduce noise...

Anyone else noticed a difference in noise (not whilst in standy-by) since the upgrade?

Was this the 7200rpm or the lower speed one?

Just ordered a "Seagate Barracuda 160GB 7200rpm 8mb Cache" for £50, should be here to fit on Wednesday

its the 7200rpm model

noisest thing in there now is the fan

Managed to get my Samsung 120gb drive into the Thomson over the weekend. I cannot agree more stongly about checking the jumpers on the new drive though!

I didn't do this properly first time around - I didn't even know that jumpers differed from disk to disk. So the first time, mine was formatted in 32gb mode - much to my annoyance.

However, I found a great util at www.killdisk.com that will completely erase a disc (I mean everything, with no chance of recovery) and I used that to wipe the 120gb disc before re-installing it.

Once it was in, we set up some LONG recordings manually to see what the capacity was and we got upto 55hrs with a little space still left - more than enough to record what we want over Xmas.

Also, we wrapped the disc and the new Zalman fan using that silicone hose that someone mentioned in the previous DHD4000 thread - got it from ModelZone for a £1/metre and it isolates them both nicely - the unit is now whisper quiet when in use....

This new disc along with the udates from Thomson have been just in time....

Yes, and it can be heard even when it's not busy recording or playing back. I wondered whether this was a background defragmentation, added by the software update.

It's hard to say whether the new software will allow more than "true" 128GB to be used. The only way to check would be to fill it up, pull the drive and look at it on a PC using a disk analyser (cotman did this back in June).

Even if the new software can use higher addressing it may only kick in on a completely blank drive. I actually bought my bigger drive many weeks ago and was waiting for the software update before upgrading the drive just in case the addressing limit had changed. But I gave up waiting and fitted the drive in time for xmas - and then the update came 2 days later!

I've scheduled everything I want to record for the next two weeks and it's still only reserved 70% of the drive (including a dozen films) - this will be more than is actually used as the software sensibly over estimates the space required compared to the bitstream used most of the time.

The experience described above (i.e. with having to remove the front panel) matches my experience. The hardest part was getting the cover off - required a fair bit of force to make it slide back and I lifted out the sides in the end.

I unplugged the fan connector before trying to lift the drive caddy out. I also disconnected the ribbon from the board first and then from the drive once the caddy out. I also unplugged the drive power connector once the caddy was out - it's a stiff fit and I didn't want to bash the board when it finally came free. The caddy lifts out easily so if it's "stuck" you've missed a screw and there are a couple on the side

Refitting was the exact reverse so: ribbon onto drive, drive power on, caddy in, ribbon onto board, fan connector on.

Seagate drive is quiet despite being faster. Works well and I'd certainly recommend doing this upgrade - doesn't seem to be a downside and the extra space makes the device so much more usefull to say the least.

The only jumper that should be set is cable select - most new drives ship this way and that's the config on the factory fitted drive.

Rik HS etc thanks very much for the detailed information which helped very much to do a successful installation of a new Seagate Barracuda 200Gb drive this afternoon. To confirm what was expected the whole 200Gb is not being used.

The detailed calculations are as follows.
The old 40Gb disk (with no recorded programs on it) showed 89% free just before taking it out. Presumably the 11% used and reserved was epg, buffer etc. Padding the record list with junk programming allowed 15hr 40mins before getting to 0% free.

The new disk showed 98% free on switch on (no epg of course) and allowed 64hr 30min programming before getting to 0% free.

If we assume that some of the 40Gb capacity is lost due to formatting and say 37Gb is usable, then this implies that 138Gb of the new disk is in use, being reserved at a rate of 2.1Gb per hour. Even if all 40Gb was available on the old disk the usage implied for the new disk comes out at 150Gb.

I note that the 138Gb figure is close to that believed to be the theoretical maximum mentioned in earlier posts

This is the same with computers pre Windows XP (sp1)

FWIW, looking at the specs for the sti5514 chip it says that it only supports ATA-5 therefore it can only support 28bit LBA addressing modes. This means that it'll only ever be able to support 138GB.

2^28 * 512 bytes = 137,438,953,472 bytes.

The 48bit LBA addressing modes didn't start until the ATA-6 specification.

On another (though vaguely related) note, since the Thomson uses the same family of chip as the Pace Twin is the HDD format the same?

Many controllers that suffer the same documented limits have been hacked to work with LBA48 on Linux. The general comment that seems to be used for this is that it reprograms the registers to support it. I have no idea what this involves in detail - I've never looked - nor whether it is possible to do with the Thomson hardware. But a documented limit may not necessarily be fixed in stone.

Similar apparently but different enough such that theTwinrip software does not work. I don't know if anyone has looked at it to find out why.

since the Thomson uses the same family of chip as the Pace Twin is the HDD format the same?
Sadly if it is, it's not close enough for TwinRIP.

I understand the Pace has three partitions, when I tried to mount the Thomson drive, the PC only saw the drive, not any partitions on it.

Bought a Samsung Spinpoint V Series HDD120Gb 5400 from MicroWarehouse last month and got around to fitting it at the weekend. Getting the top of the case off was the hardest bit but all appeared to go well. The first attempt thereafter to use the manual timer (no EPG) failed completely and nothing recorded, although an instant recorded programme recorded okay. However, last night, all timer programmes recorded okay. There is an audible clicking from the drive on playback but this seems to subside after a few minutes use. When setting the timers, I expected the blue and yellow bars displayed on the bottom to be much shorter than before in accordance with the extra space available but they seem to just as before. I am trying to fill up the disk with all sorts of programmes just to confirm how much it will accept. I was careful to set the jumper to "cable select" as per the accompanying leaflet. The remote control now appears to be a bit sluggish and sometimes doesn't appear to function at all (I'm aware of the effects of the buttons under the stanby button). Anyone else encountered these problems?

Download the HUTIL tool from teh samsung web-site and sleect the 'low-noise' option, this should get rid of the clicking (or at least most of it).

Too see how 'big' the disk is; use manual recording and schedule 'record' progs of 23hrs. It won't take long to see how big the disk is - just look at the reserved space (yellow bar)

Someone just made a post in the Entertainment section that points to some software for extracting video from the hard disk of a Thomson DTH7000. If one of you enterprising disk changers still has their original 40GB drive around it would be very interesting to find out if this software can read the DHD4000 disk format too.

http://dcadiou.free.fr/DTH7000/

With my new disk the blue bar disappreared (or was so small I couldn't see it) and the yellow bar shrunk as I expected it would.

Hi,

I need some advice please. I changed my hard disk for a samsung 120gb. It worked fine for a couple of days then when I came to switch the Thomson on in the morning the channel it was tuned to came up but it then froze. I couldn't change channel or switch it off. I disconnected but then it would not switch on .. stayed with the red light. I put back in the Thomson hard disk and everything works fine.
Looking at the samsung web site manual for the HD it looks as if I did not fully set the jumpers for cable select.
I am wondering can I just reset the jumpers, reinstall and it should be ok, or should I wipe the disk clean. If I have to do this would I install it onto my desktop PC and use the killdisk program that someone recommended the other day?

I'm pretty much a novice when it comes to HD and installing them etc.

Thanks for helping,

Robin

Sorry but I think this is unlikely to be the issue. If you had the jumpers wrong then it would just not work at all and yours did.

If you plug it into a PC and run the Samsung diagnostic utility against it you may find that the disk itself has gone to heaven - if they're going to fail they usually do it early on in their life or very late. Also worth checking to see how hot it gets if it appears OK and you reinstall it in the Thomson.

Thanks Trevor,

Is the diagnostic utility Hutil on their web site?

Yes, though they change how you get there every time I go to find it! 2 minutes ago it was http://downloadcenter.samsung.com/co...il_creator.exe

I'd double check the jumpers again! Someone previosly mentioned that the leaflet supplied with the drive was different to the instructions on the website. Sounds like you could have it set to 32GB.
You should be able to see how many hours it will record just buy setting recordings for several hours, without actually waiting for the recording to take place!

Just a quick note to say thanks for all the useful advice on this forum re. upgrading the hard disk, particulary Rik HS for his useful entry.

I took the plunge last night and fitted a Maxtor 160Gb drive to my DHD4000 and it works a treat! Software version stays the same, as already mentioned, but you lose the EPG until 3:00AM. Today of course it's all back as was, except with LOADS of Xmas TV set to record and the indicator still showing <1/4 of the disk reserved!

I have a Panasonic DVD Recorder which I used to use all the time but now, even when I archive stuff to it, I'm never quite so happy with the picture as the fact it has to record from the analogue SCART input and then apply its own MPEG compression to the material means that you just don't get that 'straight from the transmitter' quality that the DHD gives you - I know, it's impossible for this to be the case but I'm quickly becoming spoilt by the Thomson box...

Now, if Panasonic were to build an HDD DVD Recorder with two Freeview receivers...

When I installed by Samsung 120gb disk I had the jumpers set incorrectly and it installed as a 32gb driver - very easy to tell as I could fill it up with just a few films etc.

I found a very handy util at www.killdisk.com that makes a bootable floppy that can completely erase a disk - it meets US Dept of Defence standards for the data being non-recoverable (so make sure you don't delete the wrong disk!).

I tried the HUTIL thing, but for some reason it didn't recognise the Samsung disk (in fact, I had two Samsung disks connected and it didn't see either of them) - and so I couldn't use it. Hence the killdisk thing.

Once it had deleted the disk (about 5hrs), I made double sure I had the jumpers set OK and plugged it back into the Thomson and it worked first time.

A quick way to check the capacity is to manually add a couple of 24hr recordings and then see what space is left. We managed to add about 55hrs worth to our 120gb disk (bear in mind that of the 120gb it's probably only about 110gb that's actually physically useable).

Cheers

My understanding is you only need to delete the first prt of the disk ie the MBR and FATs. Anyone else using this killdisk could try leaving it for 20 mins or less and then seeing if the Thomson recognises the free space. %hrs sounds like an overnight job!!

Yeah, it should hold true that if you delete the MBR etc then it should be OK. I just wanted to make totally sure as it had previously had XP Pro installed on it and I wanted to return it to "factory fresh" before installing in the Thomson.

I'd had a nightmare (of my own making) for a couple of weeks around this disk swapping and I just wanted to do it properly the second time!