Can I assume that the new Humax HDR has a 2.5" drive, hence the 320GB size
I know I haven't even got my HDR yet and I'm thinking about upping the drive, but, does anyone with a Humax Freeview machine know if it's just a matter of changing drives or do you need a Humax 'formatting disc'
W

They may have used a 3.5" inch as I think they are cheaper...

SATA or IDE is another question? SATA I expect myself.

Automan.

If you could just swap drives you could maybe stick in a 1TB drive

Remembering the info on the unit it has at least two partitions which you have to assign on first use...

The big one for TV programs and the other for radio recordings (I think).

Automan.

The difference between a 320Gb and 500Gb is as little as £7.81, (only £15 between a 3.5" and a 2.5")
All WD SATA drives - and that's prices to you and me.
To my mind, 500GB carries a lot more kudos if they were using a 3.5" drive.

Why stop there i got a 1.5TB in my Tvix 6500a cant you also offload at least the SD stuff to a USB drive thought the USB socket that was said a couple of weeks ago

Perhaps Bob knows how big a disc it might support, there's probably an upper limit somewhere, apart from other practicalities, like partitions, and possibly O/S or part of it.

If you can transfer data out of the HD-R, there’s no point in touching the internal drive.

Not if it voids that 2 year warranty.

As discussed elsewhere here, a small difference in component prices can translate to a much bigger price at retail, once everyone's got their cut.

And with relatively tight margins, even a few quid can be crucial in terms of getting a product under psychological barriers like 300 quid.

There's some talk of not being able to transfer some programs (ie BBC HD due to copy protection issues) - or is it just that the box encrypts them so only it can play them back again?

In any case it would be a lot more convenient if you didn't have to keep copying files off to free up space

320G really isn't much (for me!) - currently have a Sky+ with 160G that's nearly always full

With BBC HD running at about 8G per hour, against 2G for SD I can see the drive getting full pretty quick.

The copy protection issues which sound lightly will be my problem as the Freesat will record HD channels and i will continue to recored SD on freeview

The top cover is held n by three screws according to the photos, and swapping a hard disk is easy. If you need to use the 2 year warranty, who's going to know if you replace the original drive first?
I'm hoping that it's all controlled by firmware on a chip in the machine. As is the case with the other Freesat boxes. Stick a new disk in, and it's automatically formatted ready for use.

You'll often find a 'void if removed' sticker over the join in the case on electronics equipment. They are impossible to remove without destroying.

My Humax Freeview PVR (9200) didn't have this when I upgraded the hard drive so I can't see why this would be any different

Makes the machine more desirable if you can upgrade the hard drive, DVD HDD recorders don't allow this for some strange reason.

There is no such sticker

Looks like the top is just held on with 3 standard philips screws, so ought to be easy to get into (unlike sky boxes which need special 'security' bits)

There's also a menu option to format the hard drive - so that looks encouraging

If I'm feeling brave I'll open mine up later...

Go for it! Tell us what type of HDD is used internally. We will see where and what sort of drive to source and get for an upgrade/replacement...

We can't be responsible for user upgrades, however I am aware that in principle we could manufacture them with 1TB drives. We sell them with 320GB because that is a price break-point at the moment for wholesale. We predict that to move at some point in Q3 next year but to maintain this price point we need to purchase the parts at the best price. I am actually interested to see what people do manage to achieve, but again Humax cannot endorse modification of the box as this will void the warranty.

Bob

Edit: (SATA 3.5in)

Yes, definitely SATA 3.5", but.. is it a 'CE' drive? Or some other especially produced ones for PVR recording (and in this case HD recording..? BTW, a 2.5" laptop drive for SD recording is way too slow - trust me I've tried, and for HD recording it is not worth having the thought!)

See: http://www.hummy.org.uk/forums/showthread.php?t=4743

(It's amazing what simple mods people can come up with )

Thanks very much for that - it's just what I need to know (ie that there's no reason that it will cause a problem having a 1TB drive in there).

Very, very tempted to give it a try ...

See the above post and note my question about the 'type' of drive. Get the model number of the HDD if you can, please...

With the 9200T, a user once put in a non-'CE' 750Gb HDD and had performance problems after a while... The bigger a drive get, it performance will be an issue...

EDIT: I'm surprised about the lack of the warranty sticker... have you checked underneath the box?

Are you saying Humax doesn't know? Surely you've tried it with a larger disk.

Oops I was wrong - there is a warranty sticker joining the top of the bocx to the bottom on the side - must have missed it in my excitement this morning

Apologies for the mis-information

JLJones,

I don't have one myself, I don't develop the boxes, that is done in Korea and I don't follow their every move. We have made them with 500GB in limited quantity, but no I haven't tried it myself, thus my interest in what others might try. But I don't say it will work because personally I haven't tried it and our QC team won't say "yes it works" until they have spent two weeks testing it, as we don't have any immediate plan to sell 1TB drives they can't tell me firmly enough to make a public statement. It might be spec'ed to 1TB but that doesn't mean it won't have unexpected issues.

Bob