Hard Drive Upgrade plus hidden menu

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I have just managed to upgrade the hard disk in the unit from 320GB to 1TB with no problems.

Existing drive: Seagate pipeline 320GB

New Drive : Western Digital WD10 EVCS serial ATA.

Upgrade is very striaght forward, fan and HD is held within plastic caddy. Remove caddy screws x 4, then swap drive.

When you power up the unit it detects new drive and asks you to format it, 5 mins later job done.

975GB for video/radio and 25GB for photo/music.

Now you have a bigger drive you can allocate more space to photo/music.

To do this the drive needs to be formatted again, so therefore suggest this is done after upgrade to aviod losing recorded items.

select: menu/system/hdd control

format HDD

select both video/radio and photo/music tick boxes

enter pin

you then get a sliding bar left to right on the hdd allocation, this is simply moved to select the amount you require, select ok, hdd formats again, job done.

I set mine to 50GB for photo/music which should be enough.

Hidden Menu :

menu/system/diagnostics

then

red green yellow blue
green yellow blue

Some interesting stuff in here !!!

( be carefull what you select !!)

Finally,

As for bugs ( well not really a bug, more a pain. )

I Set the unit to record the football last night, box gave option to record in SD or HD. Set HD option.

ITV it would appear did not transmit the football in HD only SD, therefore box never recorded anything !!!

One might say that the box is working correctly, it is, however it would have been nice for the recording to drop back to SD as the HD was cancelled.

This will be one to watch out for with future programs.

Any chance you can take a photo of what the insides look like and post them here? I want to try it but would like to know if it is indeed very easy to do.

Will any sata-300 drive work regardless of RPM or the cache size etc? If someone can post exactly what the specs of the drive have to be that would be great.

Fantastic let us know how it goes, this looks like a really good upgrade path. If only Humax sold them like this, as an optional premium model, as IMHO its needed for HD recording - I would happily pay the extra.

Yes please a photo would be nice

Getting my hands on a box would be nicer still

Sorry should have put in original post:

I got mine from Ballicom uk

in stock £100

http://www.ballicom.co.uk/advanced_s...evcs&stockav=1

hope this helps.....

if I take the lid off the box again I will take some photo's, however it is so easy.

4 screws hold the caddy to the bottom of the case, remove these.

The caddy will then lift out, unplug fan from main board, unplug sata drive connector, now caddy will come completely out of box.

Remove the 4 screws holding the drive in caddy, swap drive, then reverse above process, job done.

page Not Found

Might be a review of the drive here
http://www.pcpro.co.uk/reviews/22297...black-1tb.html

Novatech stock them @ £75

http://www.****************/novatech...html?WD-10EACS
replace all the stars above with "www .n ovatech.co.uk" and remove the spaces too. For some reason, this site thinks the name of that retailer is swearing?


That model is EACS, not EVCS, don't know what the difference is?

http://www.ballicom.co.uk/hard-drive...0.p371326.html

Second link doesn't work mate.

The EVCS version has power saving functions specifically intended for pvr, stb, video surveillance camera use etc.

"Power-conserving WD AV-GP SATA hard drives take advantage of WD's GreenPower technology to meet the extreme requirements of demanding audio and video environments. With power reduction of up to 40%, they deliver cool and quiet operation and reliability perfect for audio video applications such as PVRs, DVRs, Set-Top Boxes (STBs) as well as surveillance video recording."

The EACS version also has the power saving feature, see here
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Western-Digi...d_sim_dbs_ce_5
In fact, the specs look to be identical so you might as well save 20-25 quid on the EACS model.

It's not the only difference - the EVCS is specifically designed for prolonged AV use - see here.

I'd be inclined to go for the cheaper one, or the samsung which is supposed to be extremely quiet during seeking.

After all, these drives are designed to be used in pcs which can be on 24/7.
I've got my humax 9200 set to turn off at midnight, and back on at 7am, so the thing gets a sleep anyway

Here's the info pages to compare:

WD10EVCS 32MB Cache

WD10EADS 32MB Cache

WD10EACS 16MB Cache

Do you think its wise to upgrade the box already. There could be a major flaw in the system or something. What if you needed a refund?? (Unless you have money to spare-LOL)

Discussion of the pros and cons of different 1TB drives for PVR upgrade (in this case Sky+/HD) here.

Thanks jzee, a good read.

Excellent all my questions answered- well nearly
Is it possible to 'copy' any stuff off the old drive and onto the new drive (after formatting etc, of course!)
Or is the drive unreadable to Windows?


Problem is ITVHD and ITVSD are two different channels.
You'll have to set both to record as ITV seem to be useless

Even if unreadable to Windows - anyone know if it's possible to plug the old drive into the usb port (using a suitable SATA -> USB box) and copy any recordings back to the new drive?

I'm sure I'll want to upgrade the hard drive soon - 20% full and only had it 4 days - would be nice if I can copy the files directly without having to copy off to a third drive than back again.

If it is possible - can BBC HD recording be copied back to (which I understand can't be copied off the box via USB)?

BBC HD recordings (and others with rights restrictions) will be encrypted on the hard drive.

But presumably you will be able to archive them externally and then copy them back and play them on the HDR? This is what I'd personally do for HD stuff, where a Blu-ray-based solution is not yet practical and remains very expensive.

Does this mean I could have a 1TB drive plugged in and just dump stuff onto and off of the drive as I and when I want it. Or is it not as easy as that ?

Steve

So based on SJC's excellent and informative posting, the two hard-disk comparison spec sheets can be found at:

"Seagate Pipeline HD"
http://www.seagate.com/docs/pdf/data...s_pipeline.pdf

Western Digital "WD AV-GP"
http://www.wdc.com/en/library/ce/2879-701250.pdf

Both claim to support upto 12 HD streams, with a 3yr warranty on the WD drive.
The only noticable difference I spotted was that WD 1TB consumes 7.4W versus 320GB's 4.7W, although 'idle' are similar 4-3W.

Now we have the interesting debate (until people find out how to transfer the contents of say an 320GB drive to a new 1TB+ drive) of whether to canibalise their new/warrantied HDR sooner rather than later

Could someone please list/explain what is available in the hidden menu?

Tia!