Alan, Thanks.
Are you using eSATA to hook up with the box? My only issue would be my 500GB drive is PATA - so I could only go with usb 2.0 interface to the box (can't find an enclosure that is under $50 that takews a PATA drive and can output -eSATA.

ah, now were getting there, so you don't need the old stuff.

What you have to do it this.

When you buy a new hard disk, it's not formatted and there is no fdisk done to it. You have to prepare the disk for a system.

For the pvr, since it's their proprietary system, it will take a brand new hard disk and upon booting will do it's job from a to z.

So, just to make sure, do an fdisk to erase whatever is on the disk presently.

Dos with tell you it's not a dos partition, it will show it to you as other, so erase the partition or use Western Digital or any other tool to bring your disk back to absolute zero state.

From there, simple put it in the pvr.

It will boot, get the system, format the disk, boot a few time and voila it's done,

You're not done until the fat lady sings.

Good luck

Ruby

Jeff,

see my post 205 to 209 it's talking about initializing the disk, you will see why I am saying to bring it back to zero.

Ruby

Alan, Thanks.
Are you using eSATA to hook up with the box? My only issue would be my 500GB drive is PATA - so I could only go with usb 2.0 interface to the box (can't find an enclosure that is under $50 that takews a PATA drive and can output -eSATA. Jeff, you're making this way more complicated than it needs to be. The simple solution for external drive is to buy the Vantec enclosure and a new WD hard drive. Currently 640 GB is the "sweet spot" of pricing. Everything you need will come with the Vantec enclosure: you'll connect the enclosure to the PVR using the supplied eSATA cable.

I don't know why you want to use a PATA drive, when that's not what has been successful. Get the SATA enclosure I recommended (in the internal thread) and the WD SATA drive. We know they work, so why frustrate yourself trying some jury-rigged solution that likely won't work?

Ported this discussion from another thread on 57's suggestion.

I had a WD5000AAKB go bad this week after just over a year (installed 8/2007 according to my posts earlier in this thread) I was wondering if anyone else has had issues with a replacement drive. The original HDD lasted a few years before I upgraded.

BTW, my problems started with a "unrecoverable write error" when I hit 'list'. Unit would not record either. Soft reboot fixed for a while, reoccurred, hard boot, fixed for a while then totally unable to access the HDD. Ended up with a "storage error" message.

I replaced with the original HDD and no more issues. I have to do a diagnostic on the WD before I RMA.

Very strange coincidence. I got an "unrecoverable write error" this evening on my original drive. I did a hard reboot and all seems OK, but my PVR is 4 years old and gets a lot of use, so it's possibly the start of something...

Perhaps it's time to clone my drive before it crashes completely? Unfortunately, I don't have a PC, I've got a 4 year old G5 Mac, running OS-X 10.3.9.

Success. Ruby - thanks!!

I zeroed out the drive using a utility called KillDisk (also from Lsoft like ActiveDisk). Put in the box and 10-15 minutes later it's up and working. Recorded 4 hours of HD and spaced used = 1%. Cool.

CONCLUSIONS for anyone doing this upgrade:

1) forget the disk imaging. You will lose your old shows and future set up recordings, but the image route takes 2-4 hours and success appears elusive (at least for me!).

2) Either put a brand new drive in (i used a WD 500GB AAKB), or for an existing disk zero it out with KillDisk (it takes about 2 hours for a 500GB drive to zero out the disk).

3)Reinstall in box and be patient when you reboot (give it a full 20 mins) - and it may take 2x.

Thanks Ruby and Alan for your help!

Jeff,

You're welcome, now what are you going to sing for us.

Ruby

dogboler,

I see that from your original post when you did the switch you complained that you could fry an egg on your pvr.

That was not normal, at least mine and everybody else that commented runs cooler than the original so probably you have been carrying something flacky from the start.

I installed once a new computer with an AACS which is the equivalent but sata instead of pata and after a few hours I could hear the disk rumble from upstairs. Running the WD utility showned no problem but I knew that the platters were slightly misaligned or off center. HP replaced the disk.

Also, even under extremely heavy load, disks are made to last quite a long time. I have in a tower where I send backup and store photos disks that have been running almost 7/24 for 8 years. I know we never know when they are going to go bad but the point is bad disks are rare.

If the disk is still under warranty rma it but if it's at your cost, I would use the WD utility you got to zero the disk and clone it back, then see if the problem comes back, maybe you will have resolved your issue.

Ruby

57, I never get a chance to help you. So here it goes. Try this software.

Bombich Software: Carbon Copy Cloner
http://www.bombich.com/software/ccc.html

Or for more geeky Apple stuff see this page.
http://www.afp548.com/article.php?story=20040726230142403

Jake: Thanks for the info. I'll come back here if I see any error messages like that again in the near future. I seem to recall having one a year or two ago and things have been OK, fingers crossed. It was just weird that I got one right after the post by dobbolter.

Thanks Ruby, I am going to do as you suggest before I RMA.

Just starting procedure on my owned Rogers 8300HD. I can tell you all on the WD5000AAKB I purchased today using an older Intel MoBo in an old HP box. I also tried it on my Home Theater box running a Intel 975X motherboard. They both have latest bios. Adjusting Automatic Acoustic Management with my drive only works until you reboot/power off. I tried Hitachi Feature Tool 2.11, 2.10. Then also MHDD 4.6. Each tool set it fine to 128 but after reboot was returned to 254. I also tried HDDScan_v31 from Windows same issue. I am wondering if anyone else can confirm they actually rebooted and checked their drive again to ensure setting was permantly saved. (Western Digital may had made a firmware change if others checked.) As for folks that only have laptops don't be concerned booting to windows and using usb to IDE convertors, etc. Windows will not write to disk until it has written a disk signature to drive just under no circumstances open the disk management console. Just use Active@ Disk Image 3.1 as previous postings suggest. I am going to try use Ghost Corp 11.5 to clone my drives to save money I suspect there is a setting in options that will allow it to work. Will follow up. BTW I am 42 while new to 8300HD have been around computers since 486 days.

I believe the reason these drives work well for people is they have no power management enabled advanced or basic. At least not with several different tools I have for checking this. Seagate's use advanced power management. at least 7200.10 and 7200.11 do. In Ottawa the WD5000AAKB are in stock at Oem-Express

Norton ghost 11.5 corp doesn't work will not allow you to select drives.
I own Acronis True Image Home version 11 build 8101. So created a bootable usb flash drive (linux based) Clone does not work didn't expect it too only for Windowz. Tried someone's suggestion of back-up also was unsuccessfull after long wait was unable to select the drives yes I had sector by sector checked as it thinks the drives are empty you are unable to check them to continue. Mine is latest version pervious version may not have had limitation. I have sent them an e-mail suggesting they allow for this. So I purchased Active @ Image Drive don't suspect I will have any problems doing from dos with bootable CD. Per Pdub post 137.

Acoustic management

see post 193

Ruby

Has anyone tried DriveImage XML to clone the hard disk from a BartPE boot disk?
http://www.runtime.org/driveimage-xml.htm

How about HDClone?
http://www.miray.de/products/sat.hdclone.html#free

They are both free tools for this type of use.

i have a 8300HD PVR. i just upgraded the drive, thanks guys for the posts on how to go about it. nice and clear, the picts were great to know what to expect. i have external enclosures that have both firewire & USB2 ports. can i put the old drive in that and connected it to the pvr to view the few remaining things on the old drive that need to be watched? is there anything special that needs to be done after connecting it?

links to past posts would be fine,


thanks

No. You should have clone the old drive first as discussed in this thread by searching "clone/cloning" using the "Search this Thread" tab feature.

can still do that, not that big of a deal to pull it out or i might just leave it as is. thanks