Did you first clone the old disk image to the new disk (to transfer recorded shows)? If so, that could be where your problem occurred.

When doing a disk clone or restoring a disk image to a larger drive, Acronis True Image enables you to choose to increease the size to use the larger size of the new disk. Perhaps you missed that option in whatever you used, so you've simply created a 160 GB volume on a physically larger drive.

Edit: ACRONIS True Image has been reported as not working properly.

Allan- That seems to make a lot of sense - I don't recall seeing an size option when transferring the image. I used Active Disk to image the new HD (as someone else earlier in this thread did).

So my best option is to pull apart and reimage with Akronis (sp?)
and look for a setting to use all 500GB in the set up for the image?

Thanks - I think I'm getting somewhere in my quest for "Space"!

OK, trying cloning again. But...

Acronis won't clone and "empty disk" (not initialized - so computer thinks it's empty). How do I get around?

Active disk will recognize and clone disc but has no function to resize partitions appropriately for size of new disc. I'm sure i'd get the same result as last time - a 500GB disc that is convinced its a 160GB.

Suggestions, please

Why are you using the "Clone" function? Why not just Image/Backup the disk and then Restore it to the new disk?

Alan,
Can't find the option - I'm using Acronis true image home 2009.
Can you give me the steps?

Performed upgrade per instructions on my 8300 (non-hd) and it went flawlessly!
Some of my findings:
I first used HDDScan to reduce the "noise". I started with the other suggested utility but I don't have a floppy drive! Even a virutal floppy didn't work. In any case, the HDDScan utility worked perfectly.
I then used Active Disk to create a raw, no compression image of the original drive using a IDE to USB2.0 adapter. I didn't want to crack open my box and would have needed adapters since I'm all SATA. Warning: I needed 80GB free space on my main computer to store the image. Then I simply plugged in the 500GB drive using the adapter and restored the image. Total image/re-image took about 3.5 hours. Then I reinserted into my PVR and voilà! Hex countdown, reboot and clock. All shows appear to be there and so far they work. I went from 84% full to 11%. Sweet!
Now if someone can figure out how to decrypt the drive...

Have you used Acronis True Image at all? Have you done backups of your PC? It's the same process. I have version 11, but version 12 (2009) is pretty much the same: the function should be called Backup.

re-re-imaging drives

1) Disk Image - Haven't used Acronis before, and can't get it to recognize the original PVR disk image (identified as "empty disk"). So went back to Active Disk software (trial version), and created raw image of original drive (took 3:15), then image to disk (:52) to the new 500GB WD drive.

2) Reassembled and plugged in. Interesting no hex countdown as it did the first time I tried. This time just a normal boot of about 5-10 minutes. (boot, followed by blank display, finishing with time appearing on display). Everything looks fine.Space used seems to have dropped, but I need to get time tonight to do the math and check diagnostic pages.

BTW, what's a good average to figure in GB for 1 hour of high def?

There seems to be more sucess with the Active Disk Image software rather than Acronis (although I realize there has been success with both). It sounds like that last attempt has fixed the space issue. I do think that the original problem was that they 160GB partition was duplicated on the new 500GB disc without increasing the partition size.

Doing some quick math with my newly setup 500GB internal drive... the 'formatted' available space according to the 8300HD diagnositics page was 465GB off the top of my head if I recall correctly. With 5% of my drive used for 3 hours of HD content that is 23.25 GB in use. So that's 7.75GB/hour of recorded content on average. Figure that you're going to get 8GB per hour when doing your calculations for how much you'll be able to record but keep in mind that the formatted capacity of these hard drives is not the reported size listed when you buy them.

Hope you kept the old disk intact that was in the pvr originally.

You cannot use Acronis to clone, you have to use active disk.

Do a search for all my messages, you will find proper instructions within them.

Start over cloning your old disk to your new disk.

You will then have your old programming and programs carried over to the new disk.

Also, you will have gained the extra space.

If you really want to spend extra time to see for yourself the extra space gained, put the old disk back in the pvr, power up, look in preference the percentage left, take it out, clone it, power up, it will go through the steps listed in my previous posts, then look up in preference and you will see the extra space left.

Ruby

(although I realize there has been success with both).

nobody had sucess with acronis because it simply cannot do it. I know some people misreported success (including myself) but it was not the case. In my case I mistyped the information without checking back the content.

So, for anybody trying to do it in the future, YOU CANNOT CLONE WITH ACRONIS.

Ruby

Thanks Ruby. I will go back and edit the original ACRONIS post with a note so that newer members do not get misinformed.

Jake,

Thank you, I will try to watch out what I type in the future, my mind was going in one direction and my fingers went the other way.

I rectified myself on the subject a while back but I don't think it stuck out.

Ruby

And thanks for correcting me as well, because I myself have only used ACTIVE Disk Image, not Acronis. My comment was just quoting what I had seen reported earlier in this thread. So ACTIVE Disk Image it is! ;)

Hi I have been following this thread on and off for quite some time. With the addition of Speed HD and my pvr now past warranty I decided now was the time to upgrade my hard drive. It sounded like it would be pretty easy to do LOL. So I purchased a 500G WD PATA (AAKB version) as many have suggested. I decided I would change the acoustic setting to 128 and clone the old drive onto the new one thus keeping everyone in my family happy ;). Well nothing has been easy other than physically taking out the old drive.

1st I had problems changing the acoustic setting to 128. I had borrowed a couple of usb to ide adapters from a friend. With hddscan downloaded and installed this program would not recognize that the new drive was connected. I eventually overcame this by taking out a old drive out of my older computer and installing the new one. Hooked up through the internal ide connection the program recognized the HD and the settings could now be changed to 128.

Next try to clone the old drive. I downloaded Active@disk Management. This program will not clone the pvr drive directly using the “clone disk” feature. Its says that the original pvr disk is "empty". With closer reading to earlier posts I created a raw uncompressed Image to my HD on my computer. I then copied that image to the new 500G WD. Installed the new drive into the pvr and let her boot up. When it was finished booting I turned everything on. I went to “ LIST” and found nothing had been copied over. Oh well family will have to deal with it. I started recording something right away. It seemed fine. But soon I noticed that the pvr was responding slowing to my inputs like play, rewind, and those sorts of things. It would not even play one show that I just recorded. I got a greyed out screen.

So decided to reformat as instructions found here

http://www.digitalhome.ca/forum/showthread.php?t=17749

When reformat was completed everything appeared to be great. Then slowly while watching a recorded show the video started to stumble, pixelate and eventually freeze.

Not knowing what to do now I tried turning the acoustic setting back to 256 from 128. The same problems but definitely a noisier HD. I tried one more reformat but no change I quality.

So now I'm writing this for some help. Maybe I have a dud of a hard drive? Suggestions on how to test it?

I found the diagnostic program at Western Digital.

http://support.wdc.com/product/download.asp?groupid=502&sid=3&lang=en


The hard drive failed 1:43 minutes into the test. I have called Canada Computer and they will replace it for me when i come in tomorrow. Hopefully a working hard drive will make this easier :p

Thanks for the information. Did you keep the image? All is not lost.

Good post Cheaperthanyou.
Not much you can do with a dud hard drive other than return it. That should be the issue with the drive because if your borrowed IDE-to-USB adapter was working the drive should have showed up fine right from that first step. For the record, with my recent purchase of the same WD 500GB PATA drive I did not format the drive prior to using it in the 8300HD. I did connect it to a Windows box, "initiated" the drive under windows so it would be seen, then used HDDSCAN to change the noise setting to 128. That's it - no formatting.

When I bought a 640 GB WD drive for an external enclosure connected to the PVR, I first tested the drive under Windows. I installed the drive in the enclosure, connected it via USB to my PC and used WD Diagnostics (downloadable from WD's site) to do a full drive scan. I wanted to be sure that the drive tested error-free before using it with the PVR.

I've done a few clone operations recently (both PATA to PATA and PATA to SATA) using Active@Disk Image and USB adapters and it's worked perfectly every time. The one thing I did find is that sometimes Windows didn't detect the external PATA drives right away. In some cases, I found that I had to try a few things like repowering the PATA drive or unplugging and replugging the USB before it would be recognized. One way to check is in the "Safely Remove Hardware" dialog box list. Both external USB drives should appear on the list by make and model name such as "WD1600BB-56RDA0 USB Device". If it's listed as "USB TO IDE/SATA Device USB Device" then it's not recognised properly. Once you see both drives listed by make and model, you should be good to go. HDDScan will allow you to adjust the acoustic management settings without any initialization of the drive. In HDDScan, you should see the USB drive listed by make and model. In Active@Disk Image, both USB drives show up as empty since they are not formatted for Windows. Active@Disk Image will still perform the clone operation on an empty drive since it's simply a sector by sector copy of the source drive. The amount of time to clone a drive will vary depending on your hardware. In my case, cloning a 160G drive takes just over 4 hours.