Thanks, Ruby and 57. I see Canada Computers has that Western Digital drive for $87, so I'll go and get one of those. I guess I can survive with on a 500gb drive!

57,
CP24 :), I'm on Videotron, channel 24 is the Quebec National Assembly channel, there is no clock and I can't time them (the politicians), they move in slow motion in and outside their heads so my fast forward just put them like normal people.

Seriously though, I could put it on the Weather Channel which has a clock most of the time but unless I sit down with a chrono, it's not going to do much. Also, it's not in HD and probably has less pixels, remember in SD I think you can record something like 200 hours and in HD 20 or something.

I could not even time myself against myself.

What I do notice though is FF is not allways at the same speed in all instances, let me explain. If I take a recording which shows the 30 seconds countdown, and do a FF, It will take X amount of time to zip to zero. If I do a stop and restart at the beginning, I could but not necessarily get the same reading, at least, if I do this a few times, I will get to a point where it will count down normally and towards 10 seconds left will start accellerating. This means that the HD buffer comes into play. I am probably, the first time around, taking some of the buffer's info. I also think that when I say that I am skipping over 2 minutes of commercials faster, is when I press FF, it starts, then the buffer kicks in and (since it's going faster I can't really tell) once the buffer it empty it ff normally while the buffer get more info and again starts going faster.

Sorry, I didn't want to take all that time on this issue, it's just that I am surprised that nobody mentioned this before.

snake oil, don't want to sell you a hard disk but.....

I often had the problem described in the link below posted in the A/V receivers Amplifiers.

http://www.digitalhome.ca/forum/showthread.php?t=88634

Hope that link works, but here's the thing, since I wanted to test the Acoustic Change I made on my hard disk (which I did put at the low level), I made a hell of a lot of Fast Forward, Backward etc. I still have the Spike/Spark in my speakers but very very rarely will I get them now that the disk is on Acoustic Management Enabled, can you believe this or I'm trying to sell you snake oil.

Beat's me but hey, I'm happy, what can I say more. Hugh, can you come up with an answer why on this one????

I just upgraded the Scientific Atlanta Explorer 8300 HD with WD5000AAKB . However, when I plugged (Power Cord)it the Green LED screen displays (Er.63) then stays on (h) with numbers ascending quickly from about 066 to about 874.

I kept it on for several hours and overnite, but with the same results.

If anyone has any suggestions or resolution to this problem it would be great to hear about them.

I think based on LED display the converter is going through some diagnostics process and is unable to proceed due to en error. During this process, you can't start the system using the power-on button because it does not work.

My guess is that there is something wrong with the internal hard drive.

I would try the following. You might have tried one of them but here goes.

Disconnect the power for 30 minutes then reconnect, long shot but maybe.

Other than that, yes you could have a faulty drive but it does not happen often.

Reopen the pvr, don't unscrew anything. It could be that your drive did not come with the jumpers on cable select. Unplug the data cable from the drive, from memory, you can now see the jumper, the drive is now upside down, pin 2 (cable select) which in your case (reverse) should be the first one of the left hand side and the only one with a shunt/jumper. If the pin is correct then I would try the next thing.

Carefully remove the pin, examine (you might have to take the drive out) if the pins are straight or bent, put the shunt back in. I would also check to see if the pins on the data cable are straight. Try if now without shutting the case.

Did not resolve the issue, now you have to determine if the drive is working properly.

Download the Western Digital drive utility, make a bootable CD. Unplug the other drives in your computer, put the new one in, pin it as master, which should be no jumper on the 10 pins. Boot with the CD and run the utility, you will find a test to determine if the drive is ok.

If it shows ok the next step I would try is to boot your computer with a system disk and run FDISK on the drive and then FORMAT. Don't think you will have to get to that but if so try that. Boot with the hard disk, if it boots, the disk is not at fault. Just to make sure, run the disk utility again and test all sectors.

Pin it back to cable select which now that it's in your hand, it is the last pin on the right of the 10 pin bank.

Connect it to the pvr (lying on a CD sleave) don't screw it in and put the power on. Let's see what happens next, you should have a countdown, a boot and after about 15/20 minutes, the clock should appear.

If it does not, connect you old drive back in, is the pvr ok, if so, and you have followed everything I described, I'm out of solutions.

Make sure again that you have it pinned correctly.

Good luck

We forgot the obvious.

Before you do anything, is the drive spinning, could be that you did not fully insert the power plug in, disconnect, reconnect, see if it's that.

Don't know what an error 63 is but could be that the drive is not connected.

Thank you Ruby for your promp reply.

The ovious was I needed to initialize the Disk before formatting it.

Yesterday, it was my brother in law’s turn to change the disk in his pvr. I went to supervise and explain how to do it according to the photos and instructions showed on page 9. He found an easier way to do it.

He discovered it as soon as I told him to take the 2 torx screws off the top crossbar and then the 8 torx screws on the side to get to lift the rack. You then have to pried/force the bars out of its groove in order to push it sideways to access the hidden screws, he said it was not normal so he put the 8 torx side screws back in.

He took the 3 Philips screws off holding the drive to the side plate, everything came out by pulling up and inwards with the drive still screwed to the rack, the gooey stuff stayed glued to the side panel. He took off the 4 top Philips screws and voila. To put it back in, he screwed the new drive to the rack, inserting the rack in by aligning the 2 protruding part into the side panel, put the 3 Philips screws in and the 2 torx screws back on the crossbar.

I have to admit, it was meant to be done this way. No forcing anything and clear access to all screws. If the gooey stuff would have stayed on the disk (mine did that) instead of staying glued to the side panel, he would have had to do like me and align it back on the disk but I think the glue is meant to stay glued to the side panel when pried so he had one less step to contend with.

Neapolitan,

Don't understand why it would need to be initialized, if we leave this tread like this, people will think you have to do a format in their computer before putting it in the pvr.

Yesterday, when we plugged in the power after the switch, the first thing I saw on the display was [-[_] for a few seconds, then er63, then the number sequence starts off, then boot, then hddf, then boot, then nothing for about 8 minutes and finally the clock is back and it's done.

Where people could disturb the process is in the 8 minutes (approximate) if they try to power on or unplug, then I don't know what the sequence would be.

So, your installation was not normal and I don't know why because their proprietary system take over when you put any disk in and the first thing it does probably when you see the numbers flash is downloading the operating system to the disk then doing the format.

Did you have that disk in a computer with an operating system on it prior to putting it into the pvr???????

I'll have to agree. I upgraded a couple of 8300HDs before the instructions/photos were posted and I used same method as your Brother-in-law. It just seemed like the natural way to do it (less screws to remove). Both methods get the job done.

Ruby, the answer is yes the hard drive was installed prior to putting it into the 8300

I just finished replacing my HD in my SA8300 (non HD) with the recommended WD 500gb AAKB drive. Thanks to the very detailed posts in this forum, I had no problems, and should have no problems with running out of space until at least christmas time.

As suggested in one of the posts, I did a sector by sector copy of the old 80gb disk to the new one using Norton Ghost and a small program I wrote, and lost none of my recordings, or even future programmed recordings. Rebooting after the replacement took about 10 minutes or so.

Once again, thanks to all the people on this forum that made this an easy and effective upgrade.

As suggested in one of the posts, I did a sector by sector copy of the old 80gb disk to the new one using Norton Ghost and a small program I wrote, and lost none of my recordings, or even future programmed recordings. Rebooting after the replacement took about 10 minutes or so.
Glad to hear that it went well!

You mention "a small program I wrote". Can you say more about this? I am considering making this change as well, and was not aware that anything more than Ghost was required.

I just purchased a HD8300 box.

I saw the step-by-step HD8300 HDD swap process posted by Ghost"" with great interest. I'm definitely planning to swap my HDD but I'm wondering if I can put a bigger than WD500AAKB 500GB drive in. Has anyone successfully installed a larger HDD? If so, what size and what make/model?

I also wonder why "Ghost" came up with a WD HDD, why not a Maxtor as the OEM HDD in the HD8300?

WD has been reported as the most successful HD used for the internal upgrade or for an external drive. Unfortunately WD drives larger than 500GB are had to find locally, and in general 750GB EIDE drives are almost double the price of a 500GB drive.

There was one report of someone who tried a Seagate 750GB but the performace was sub standard (pixelation). If you can get a WD 750GB it is quite possible that it would be flawless. Just remember, the bigger the drive the more you stand to loose if/when it eventually dies as a DVR is not a good archival media.

Fist of all: Thanks everyone to share your informations, opinions, tips, ..... It helps me a lot.
Yesterday (Sunday 17 August 2008) I decided to change my original SA 8300HD WD 160Go by the WD5000AAKB bought in February 2008 (because it is difficult to find it now, only SATA are easy to find).
So I followed every detailed steps to "undress" my SA 8300HD. No problem here, just want to take my time to NOT break something.
I wanted to make a clone (not lose schedule and previously recorded programs).
Tried Ghost v11, Drive Image 2002, and some other but did not success, because this tools do not want to clone "An empty disk" (HD been encrypted, it is seen as "Empty" or other "Unaccessible drive"....)
Reading all the post, I remember PDub replies
http://www.digitalhome.ca/forum/showpost.php?p=719287&postcount=137

"I used Active@ Disk Image version 3.1.5 to create a clone"

For me it was the same software, but version 3.1.6
Having only one laptop, I did the clone with both drive (WD160 Go and 500Go) with USB2 enclosure.
Wait 4 hours and plug back everything in SA 8300HD.

First run, some information appear on the screen:
- er60, er63
- Countdown from r3xx to r000 (in hexa)
- Process
- Boot

Wait 10 minutes, and "VOILA", clock appear on the little screen, and funny things, records begin (Olympics Games).
Power up TV, make some tests and verifications => NO PROBS! :D
All my schedules and records are here and play well
Diagnostics said 463GB available to use for records.

Conclusion:
- Thanks a lot for this forum
- Go ahead people and be happy with MORE space to record HD program

Notes:
I have set acoustic settings to 128 before cloning with freeware tools mentioned on this forum (http://www.hddscan.com)
Happy to hear (or not hear) :D that it works great!
As mentioned by some, I feel (to be verified by more tests) that SA 8300HD answer more quickly to command, and fast forward appear faster too.
Not big point, but very appreciable

can someone explain this "acoustic settings to 128" stuff... what does this all mean? I can't seem to find the original post?

Enter "acoustic" in the "Search this Thread" feature (above).

@buzzinhornets

If you search about acoustic software and settings, you will find that WD has some options to put hard disk in "quiet" mode.
Quiet mode is enable when you write (by using some software) a value "128" in the beginning. If there is no value, HD will works in its default mode (For example, my Hitachi laptop HD was by default in "256" = No acoustic. I enter the value "128" (in place of 256) and now my Hitachi Laptop HD is very quiet.)

So, when you set the "128" value by using an acoustic software, your drive know it has to run in "quiet" mode.

Only acoustic compatible HD could be set.

Hope it helps.

Buzz,

Start by reading post #96, you will have a link to the Hitachi utility. Keep reading the other posts after that one and you will find other posts that clearify the subject.

You never did answer if you were successful in cloning your disk...... with your usb setup.

Also, reading myself backwards, I mislead you and IT'S IMPORTANT for others to know, I cloned with Active Disk Image not with Acronis but forgot to mention it, I did try with Acronis but it saw the drive as unallocated and cannot clone such a drive.

Would be nice of you to give us feedback.