Upgrading Samsung HDSKY

Which replacement drives can you use and which do people recommend?

Postby paul1962 » Sun Nov 09, 2008 12:44 am

Thanks for your reply.

When trying to record or use live pause an error message is shown on the screen saying there is a technical problem.

The box is back in one piece at the moment and I can't remember the exact message but as soon as I get chance I'll reformat the drive to reproduce the error.
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Postby pcbbc » Sun Nov 09, 2008 10:42 am

AH, I think I know the one you mean - Not so important now if you don't want to rip everything apart again!
I thought it might have been some kind of special error!
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Postby paul1962 » Sun Nov 09, 2008 11:51 pm

Its not a problem taking it apart, just lack of time at the moment.

It seems a little odd that nobody else has had this problem so when I do take it apart I'm also going to keep increasing the formatted size starting at 750Gig until it fails.
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Postby pcbbc » Mon Nov 10, 2008 10:24 am

The strange thing is I can't think of any limits around that size that would be causing this problem. And as you say it's odd no one has seen this before.
Look forward to your results.

Probably easiest and quickest to do a binary chop, if you know what one of them is? It's the quickest way to narrow down the actual limit by always picking a value that is half way between the known working and not working values:
Say that 750 works, 900 fails
Chose value half way between the two - 825
750 works, 825 fails
Chose value half way between the two - 787
etc

Look forward to your results when you have time!
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Postby Greytop » Wed Nov 12, 2008 4:50 pm

To anybody with a new Samsung box that is interested.
I fitted a new Seagate ST3500830SCE 500GB drive today. I transferred all HD recordings and Anytime over using the excellent Copy+ :wink: and its now installed and running silently and without a hitch. No reboots, crashes or any other problems.
The drive has exactly the same power consumption specs as its small 300GB brother so I didn't expect any. The only small issue is that there are not that many of these drives about now being last years 'vintage'.
Overall though I'm happy with the result and glad I went for this drive.
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Postby pcbbc » Wed Nov 12, 2008 4:57 pm

Fantastic - Thanks for the details.
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Samsung HD103UJ - NOT COMPATIBLE, or some problem!!

Postby wonderboy » Thu Nov 13, 2008 6:36 pm

Hi All,

thought I'd just post the results of upgrading my New Samsung HD box with Samsung HD103UJ. Someone mentioned the problem of after copy+ OK,

Everything seems ok, but once its been playing for several minutes it starts to stutter, then freezes up, & eventually re-boots.

This is happening to me, I can hear the HDD re-initialise, but since someone else got this drive to work, maybe something else is afoot. Any ideas?

Bit pi**sed off at present since I spen money on a USB caddy and a disk that I can't use....

I have replaced the original 300Gb disk and all appears to be well.
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Postby bengunn » Mon Nov 17, 2008 6:10 pm

If anyone wants to get a Seagate ST3500830SCE 500GB, which is the big brother of the original HDD in the Samsung HD box and appears to work, they are in very short supply and appear to be almost obsolete.

I have just ordered one from a US company on eBay who claim to have 10 in stock. You can find them at http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?Vi ... 0281772916

The cost, including shipping to the UK, is about £90, which is not too bad.
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Postby wonderboy » Wed Nov 19, 2008 9:01 am

The thing is people have reported success with some drives while others fail with the same drives - some factor that affect Samsung only and is not apparent yet.

I would worry that even fitting the above drive may or may not work, and I'm a bit reluctant to spend another £70 or £90 just to find out that it may not work anyway.

I really would like to hear from an expert as to what causes the Samsung to reject drives - size? Power usage? (unlikely as people have reported on the other forums that even powering the drive from an external caddy produces the Freezing/Rebooting fault)


:shock:
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Postby pcbbc » Thu Nov 20, 2008 10:27 am

My guess will be timing inconsistencies - but seeming as no one outside the industry to my knowledge has ever worked out why some drives work while others are unreliable for standard Sky boxes - I doubt anyone will do so for the Samsung HD box either... :oops:
I hope I am wrong though.
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Postby skituscanycom » Thu Nov 20, 2008 4:48 pm

wonderboy wrote:I would worry that even fitting the above drive may or may not work, and I'm a bit reluctant to spend another £70 or £90 just to find out that it may not work anyway.


Assuming that your HDSKY is relatively new, I would suggest a call to SKY and get them to swap your box. Why settle for a potentially less reliable box when you could get another one that will work fine without you needing to part with another penny :?:

Just explain the symptoms you are getting with the 1TB Disk 'as if' it were the original disk.
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successful 1TB western digital WD10EADS upgrade on Sky hd

Postby oovarvoo » Thu Jan 29, 2009 2:22 pm

My hd box is a pace and I upgraded the hdd with a western digital WD10EADS yesterday and all is well (so far anyway).The pace box itself was a little different in layout to the tutorial I followed,the hdd is not in a plastic caddy and is easier to replace.
I had the original seagate 300gb drive in the pace box and had 3% free on my planner, did a full copy+ with both drives attatched internally to my PC which went without a hitch then put the new 1TB drive in the sky hd box fired it up and.......................83% free in the planner and all my previousley recorded programs there as well(working).
Testing recording and playback etc. and 24 hours later all seems fine,no shutdowns or any other problems, thus far anyway,fingers crossed it will be OK.
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Postby pcbbc » Thu Jan 29, 2009 2:27 pm

Great - Glad Copy+ was of use to you!

From the pictures I have seen of the internals it does look like the Pace box is better designed than the Thomson. The drive even has it's own little enclosure built into one side of the chassis.

Good luck with your new drive!
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WD hdd

Postby oovarvoo » Thu Jan 29, 2009 2:35 pm

Thanks for copy+, fabulous program.I think the drive I used was the same as the one the first poster was having issues with I think he got the model number wrong, its a WD10EADS and not a WD10EACS.
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WD hdd

Postby oovarvoo » Fri Jan 30, 2009 12:40 pm

After some research the WD10EACS does exist,my mistake.

The WD10EACS has a 16 MB cache whereas the WD10EADS has a 32MB cache, thats the only difference as far as I can see, dont know whether that could cause an incompatability?

WD10EADS Still working fine.
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