Swapped the hard drive in my Sky+ HD Amstrad DRX890 to a Western Digital WD20EVDS 2TB drive 2 weeks ago.
As previously reported by others:
1) the factory installed drive was a Seagate Pipeline 500GB.
2) there are no warranty related tamper-proof seals/stickers anywhere in the box.
It was easy enough to do thanks to the excellent guides available on these forums!
I used Copy+ 1.2.0.7 Beta to transfer my existing recordings (from an Amstrad DRX180 PVR2 with 500GB) over to the new drive with no hitches. Both boxes are Big Endian, so no conversion required. I had 415GB of recordings, now showing up as 77% free on the planner which is what one would expect with 1.75TB Personal recording space and 250GB taken up by "Anytime".
I did not try initialising the 2TB drive with the box alone since it would have meant an extra sequence of plugging and unplugging the box to test this.
I can't really compare to how the DRX890 would normally perform with the factory Pipeline 500GB drive as I never used the box prior to the upgrade. As far as the DRX890 / WD20EVDS combination goes:
1) TV Guide - super fast access and scrolling. This also applies to all other areas of the EPG except "Anytime" and "Planner" (qv. points below)
2) Anytime - up to 2sec lag before fast scrolling is possible
3) Planner - up to 7sec lag before fast scrolling is possible. I suspect that this is likely to get worse as the planner continues to fill up. How much worse, who knows; but at present, I find this more than acceptable. YMMV.
4) Play/Pause/RW/FF - all function smoothly and respond immediately to remote control keypress
5) Hard drive access clicks are relatively quiet and only audible when TV volume is muted. YMMV.
All of the above were tested with 2 recordings going on in the background.
6) Cooling fan - remains off whilst box is in standby. Spins up 1min after box is turned on and remains running. Stops running about 30secs to 1 min after standby. Spins up in standby when "Anytime" is downloading to the hard drive.
It's a reasonably quiet fan and is not audible when audio volume is at normal listening levels. Might be hard to ignore if one had this in a bedroom! I have no idea whether the native Pipeline drive would have similar fan behaviour. I'd be interested to find out, but I'm unlikely to be able to swap the drives once again to test it given how much SWMBO uses the box!!
In summary - an excellent upgrade in my book.
Stuart - Many thanks once again for your truly fantastic Copy+ software. Your charity and dedication to continually updating and providing support for it is commendable! I gave you a small donation back in June 2006 - it's time I sent you a bit more beer money!