Just installed my new drive... still on the new software etc - just plugged straight in! loads of space now!

My new drive just arrived. I've just taken the lid off the set top box. Do I need to remove the whole of the black plastic drive bay to install the new hard disk? Or does the hard disk just rest in there and need to be prised out?

(I just thought I'd ask the question before getting brutal with the box)

Cheers
Stu

No, I'm afraid you have to unplug all the cables including the fan supply, take the whole tray out and then remove the drive using the screws that are in the bottom of the tray.

It's not so bad though - most difficult bit is probably getting the lid back on the box!

Yes - see my earlier post about this (post #32) and also the one on the fist page of this topic by Rapidone post #20. It's held in by 4 screws around the edges IIRC and two at the side.


Once the caddy is out, there are 4 screws underneath the caddy that hold the drive in place. You can't just prise it out.

Thanks for the speedy responses.

I've actually just finished the job. I realised that you need to undo the two screws for the front panel display to allow clearance for the black tray.

As has already been stated, I found getting the lid on/off the box the biggest pain.

Anyhow jobs done now.....and loads of disk space!!

Stuart

I seem to have a similar problem as 2Robin

I put in a Samsung 160gb hard drive (SP1604N) a few days ago, it worked perfectly.

Yesterday morning the standby LED was yellow. No other LED was on but the machine was playing the last programme I had been listening to. There was no response to remote or box and after powering off and on I was left with a yellow standby LED and no response at all. I replaced the original hard drive and everything was fine.

I have looked at the Samsung drive with the diagnostic utility Hutil and the drive appears to be ok. I have tried setting the drive to Quiet, Medium and Fast but it makes no difference. I have also tried the drive in the Thomson but taking the power from a computer as the Samsung draws twice the power from the 12 volt supply than the original (going by the labels).

Between each test I replaced the original drive, which always works perfectly.

If anyone has any thoughts on this I would be pleased to hear them.

after powering off and on I was left with a yellow standby LED and no response at all.
I've had this in the past when the box has crashed and required a power-off reset. It seems to do the equivalent of a chkdsk while the yellow LED is on, the disk is seeking while in this state. I've on occasions had to leave it up to 10 minutes to let it sort itself out but it's always eventually gone back into standby accompanied by the fan going up to full speed and then slower again.

Try the disk back in it again and give it a period with the yellow LED on to see if it sorts its life out

Well I'm stuck! Upgrading hard drive and can't get black drive caddy out. I've undone all the screws (yes, I've checked!) including the 2 for the front panel. Can't seem to get the caddy past the framework at the front. Do you have to take the front panel off altogether? If not, how much force should I need to apply to be able to ease it past? I think I must be missing something...

Any suggestions appreciated!

the meatal framework at the front just slides forward, you dont even need to force it

Also make sure the screws are physicallt out. Sometimes the thread of the undone screw catches on the PCB (circuit board) and prevents the caddy coming out.

Mission accomplished! Thanks for your help on the forum.

New 120Gb Seagate installed and all working OK - can now record about 60 hours of telly over Christmas that I will never have time to watch!

Thanks for the suggestion, unfortunately no luck. The standby LED stayed yellow and the box remained locked up and after an hour the drive felt very hot.

I shall have to try a low level format and see if that makes any difference although I’m loath to do that, as there are several recordings on the drive that I was hoping to watch.

The disadvantage of a big drive is that you can lose a large number of recordings.

Oh well, soon be Christmas.

Thanks for the suggestion, unfortunately no luck. The standby LED stayed yellow and the box remained locked up and after an hour the drive felt very hot.
Sorry to hear that, it was worth a try. Thankfully it seems from reports here this is few and far in between. I have on occasions been concerned when I've had to power cycle the box that it would lose stuff, but so far it hasn't let me down. Unlike on the Fusion thread where several people report losing everything or having to reformat. My earliest recording is early August and that's with the new HDD.

I guess if you wanted to, you could try taking a drive image with something like "ghost" and keeping hold of it, it just in case someone works out how to rip files from the box?

Just to let you know my experience with Hard Drive upgrading.

I too bought a new 160Gb drive (a Maxtor, 7200rpm, 8mb buffer, exact model available if anyone wants it) and fitted it about 5 days ago and it all worked fine for a while. After a day of it being in I had the same problems as the people above with the yellow light and slow/no response to remote or front panel buttons.

I found that if I plugged the unit in without the aerial connected it worked fine - you could play back programmes from the disk, navigate the menus and stuff but just couldn't use the thing for what it was designed for, i.e. recording Freeview broadcasts! As soon as I plugged in the aerial it froze.

I swapped the old drive (original Seagate 40Gb) back in and it worked fine, just as before I took it out.

The next day (Christmas Eve) I took the Maxtor drive back to Novatech and swapped it for a Seagate 160Gb 7200rpm drive with a 2Mb buffer - the model is ST3160021A - cost me £55 (£2 less than the Maxtor).

Fitted it on Christmas Eve and it's worked perfectly to date - no lock-ups, no yellow light, lots of Xmas TV recorded fine and plays back without glitches (in fairness, so did the Maxtor until it died).

It would seem to me that either there is a specific Seagate driver in the DHD4000 (perhaps they only ever tested it on Seagate drives) or that other drives draw too much power from the PSU, thereby knocking out other parts of the circuit. The other possibility is that the box doesn't work properly with the 8Mb buffer drives.

Anyway, I'll keep you posted - problems or not...

I don't think the problem is to do with the 8Mb buffer - I fitted a 120Gb Seagate with the 8Mb buffer and have had no problems.

Could be to do with different power requirements for different brands - I seem to think from reading through this forum that people have been succesful with both Seagate and Samsung, not sure about Maxtor. Anybody using the latter with no problems?

Here are the URLs for the drives in my PC. I'm NOT claiming either of these will work in a DHD4000, but I'll be going for a Seagate when I upgrade.

http://www.seagate.com/cda/products/...85,580,00.html

http://www.wdc.com/en/products/products.asp?DriveID=27

My point being, that the Seagate is unusual in that it takes 12VDC only, with no 5VDC at all according to the data sheet. If this is true for the DHD4000 drive, then other makes will be pulling current from the 5VDC rail that isn't expected.

Do you know, you're right! I've just looked up the Maxtor drive and it requires the 5V rail - I reckon you could've sussed the problem (that's assuming our Seagates will continue to work )

The ever-entertaining world of technology!...

My Seagate failed this morning... woke up to a flahing orange light at about 11am, left it for a few hours and it was still flashing, took the plug out and rebooted, would not turn on or respond to any buttons just the orange light on the front. tried this a few times, took the drive out and put the original back in and all is ok!

The drive was this---> CLICK HERE

worked for about 5 days and had recorded loads!

This is so depressing When my upgrades go wrong like this I don't always think too clearly so if you don't mind I'll suggest some obvious things.

When my (non-upgraded) box hung the other day, it needed to be unplugged for a minute or so. When I rebooted it I worried because it takes ages to check the disk, the error light stays orange and you get garbage on the screen..

So if you've had a 120Gbyte drive in there, it might just need ages to do its disk scanning / reformatting thing. It takes long enough to do a disk check on the 120Gbyte drives in my PC so maybe the poor old Thomson needs to take its time.

Sorry if this is cobblers, but things aren't looking to rosy for DHD4000 at the moment and I'm clutching at straws. I hope someone from Thomson reads DS.

Shame that some of these manufacturers aren't more helpful, especially as us 'early adopters' are the enthusiasts that are trialing their incomplete products! It wouldn't hurt for information to appear, even anonomously that gave the HDD paramaters. People could still make their own decisions on whether they invalidated the warranty.

I've moved over from a Pace to the Thomson and Pace users are similarly trying to fathom out all sorts of issues that could at least help understand why the boxes perform as they do. I guess it's all down to commercial secrecy.

Just a quick point, is there anything that gives away on the Thomson box that the case has been opened?

After a low level format with the Hutil utility the Samsung 160 gb drive is working again, several programmes recorded yesterday and EPG downloaded last night. If it fails again I will bring you the sad tidings.




This is the third similar failure posted recently, could it be connected to the EPG download somehow? Has it only happened since the software update?




When my drive failed I left it for over an hour with the yellow (orange) LED on but it got very hot so I stopped it. The low level format on the computer took over eight hours!

Yes, I only installed the drive a few days before christmas



I am going to try this today, but I suspect it will just fail again in a few days

I upgraded to a Samsung 120Gb 2Mb buffer (SP1203N). Have had NO real issues, before or after OTA upgrade. Have about 60 hours of recordings. Also have archived off several episodes of stuff for family with no probs.

Below are the specs of the original harddrive and the one I upgraded to, for anyone in the know...

CLICK ME!!!

Interestingly my original HDD was a seagate ST340015ACE and it takes .58A on the 5V rail and 0.31A on the 12V (according to the blurp on the top of the disk! My new Samusng is .6 and .5 respectively.