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Replacing 9242 Hard Drive Discussion

220K views 192 replies 73 participants last post by  jdevlin 
#1 ·
Being that you can now add an external drive to the 9242 and other model receivers, can we change the internal drive to a larger one?

It would seem that adding the ability to attach an external drive would moot any reason to limit our ability to change the internal drive.

Alt
 
#136 ·
Although an IDE drive may not work in this PVR, it certainly is adequate for HD. The Rogers SA8300HD uses an IDE/PATA drive and can record two HD programmes, while watching a third recorded programme. In addition the bitrate on Rogers is significantly higher than it is/was on Bell, especially now that Bell is MPEG 4. Three programmes on Rogers could be as high as 58 Mbps.
 
#138 ·
would someone be able to help me in the right direction as to where to go with my 9242 and its constant rebooting....

last night I put another hard drive in it from a different 9242 and it work for a long time however as soon as I hit picture in picture only one side works and the other side is black... then when swapping to the black screen it starts it into a reboot cycle and never came back... I then took the cover off and unplugged the hard drive and the receiver works fine and has been working ever since.

what can the issue be with the receiver.
 
#140 ·
I feel that these posts should also be here so it belongs with the thread:

Here is the link to when the 9242 started to accept 1 Terabyte hard drives (personally confirmed) in Link 2 the post it shows the model number listed.

http://www.digitalhome.ca/forum/show...postcount=2030

Here is the summary from that post to guide you quickly:

Quote: "UPDATE: The 9242 now accepts 1 Terabyte drives as of V195. I just threw a Seagate Pipeline HD .2 1TB ST31000424CS in my 9242 and it picked it up right away without issue. This was tried by myself a few months ago to no avil as of V194. But we are now able to still have the Best PVR and expand its internal storage."
 
#141 ·
#150 ·
The 9200 power supply "should" be back backwards compatible. From my testing it works fine as I have done this in the past. If you don't feel like swapping them entirely. Perhaps you can take the capacitor you need from the 9200 power supply and solder it to the 9242 power supply as most of the caps "should" be the same. But personally you should be good with just swapping the power supply themselves.
 
#152 ·
If it was just the power supply cap then perhaps you might be ok, but you didn't notice any other bulging caps on the main board? (perhaps take a closer look at the caps again) look to see if there is any orange or white goo leaking from them on the main board as well as bulges (it maybe hard to detect as they maybe prematurely failing but haven't bulged yet)
 
#154 ·
Now with the Seagate Pipeline HD .2 1TB ST31000424CS becoming rarer and "factory refurbished" is there any other 1 TB's that work in a 9242?

What about the Seagate Pipeline HD ST1000VM002 currently available on TigerDirect.CA for $78.73?

Also, if that is a good one, is there any NVRAM steps that need to be done to get it going?
 
#156 ·
How to repair your flaky internal hard drive..it's alive!!

So my internal started to give me issues last week....311 errors, 024 errors etc and I thought I had lost all of my recordings. If I unplugged the receiver for a few hours, it would come back on and work for about 5-15 minutes..tried to archive to my EHD but every time, it crapped out before it finished.

Today I decided I had nothing to lose so I pulled the drive and swapped SATA cable, no difference, went to swap the power cable and one wire came right out of the white plug...jeez, that will do it. I soldered that back on...that wasn't the problem..further digging required...:rolleyes: I pulled the drive right out and took it to the shop and plugged it into my computer, it spun up, then shut down...didn't come back. Mmmm. I decided to pull the drive apart.

If you look at the side with the circuit board, there are 4 or 5 torx screws..remove those and carefully pull straight up away from the drive housing. There is some foam under there, probably gummy and rotten, so just get rid of that. You may need to wash the residue off the board, use Isopropyl alcohol and a toothbrush. Don't soak it, just enough to wet the surface and get off the gunk. Be gentle with all the parts. Oh, did I mention you should follow all antistatic procedures? On the component side of the board, there are 16 or so gold pads, in 2 rows, that mate with the 16 or so pins on the chassis. On mine, some of those gold pads were actually brown, and oxidized..WTF gold isn't supposed to oxidize.. well, maybe they are just copper. Anyway, you need to clean up those pads. I used 600 grit wet/dry paper, very lightly burnished the contacts clean until they were gold again. Then I put a drop of Deoxit on them to preserve the cleaning process. Put it all back together (leaving out the foam) and put it back in the PVR and Shazaaam!! It works, right away, drive spins up and boots within 30 seconds. I immediately started to archive my recordings...just in case, but it's been an hour now and all is well. :p:D:)

I hope this helps you guys with the flaky drive problems. If you are at the point of replacing it anyways, what have you got to lose?

Cheers
Paul
 
#157 ·
Okay I have a 9242 that had been experiencing (for about 8 months) "weak" signal strength on the HD channels. Just addig that for info, if it is relevant in a way that I don't know. I didn't really pay much attention to it because we mostly watch netflix or OTA. The PVR is essentially for the kids to record their YTV and Teletoon shows etc. There is also an external h/d attached.

About two weeks ago we got the "reference 0521". We were however able to watch live tv and pre-recorded shows. A couple of times the kids turned the PVR "off" (i.e. to the splash screen) and then the PVR shutdown completely. Unplugging for a minute as the error code suggested, got it going again, although no PVR function. I assumed that it was just a case of replacing the H/drve as this thread implies.

For the past few days the PVR does not boot completely. The green light comes on briefly, then the T.v. indicates the input (component) is active. A few moments later two a vertical bar flashes twice on the T.V., then nothing for several minutes until the cycle repeats. I left it for a day and half, and it was still stuck.

I have tried pressing and holding the power button, unplugging for an hour to allow the unit to cool down, as a few posts have suggested. Finally tonight, I unplugged and took the cover off. I unplugged the h/d (two cables), and still no remedy. It finally occurred to me that maybe unplugging the external h/d should have been a first step (D'Uh). Unplugged external h/d as well, press and hold unit's <PWR> and finally it jumped back to the splash screen.

I have not disassembled the PVR enough to see how many of the capacitors are "bulging" as Queball mentioned in this post. The ones I can see, that are similar to his, appear to be bulging as well. I just don't know enough about capacitor plague to identify bad caps visually.

Any suggested next steps would be greatly appreciated. Is it bad caps, bad h/d, bad external h/d,... or a combination of all or some of the above? Does this belong in electronics heaven, or is it worth trying to fix?? Should I try plugging the internal h/d back in and try dumping the NVRAM and then reformat (concerned about this step)???

I might add, I do enjoy the ability to record OTA, when I can, which I don't think any other Bell product supports. If I add dishcare, how long should I wait before calling back with my problem? I have a 2700 and 3100 for two older, rarely used TVs as well, if that factors.

Happy Long weekend!
 
#158 ·
Replacing failed internal drive

I have a 9242 and my internal HDD just failed. I know that not all replacement drives work with the pvr, but is there any harm in trying out a couple of old 1TB drives I have to see if they will work? If the receiver won't get into a permanent loop or cause other damage, I'll try out these drives I have.
 
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