Elaine, I think I made a mistake last night while we were discussing this. I don't believe you can clone the external drive, because it will have a different serial number and as soon as you insert the SATA cable, the PVR will try to "format" it and use it as though it's a new drive. Your old programmes would very likely be lost. Someone else will need to confirm, or attempt this procedure... If someone does, please post on this external cloning in the external drive thread. Thanks.

Again, sorry for misleading you, but you'll probably have to go the internal clone route if you want more space - that's why the cloning is discussed in this internal drive thread.

hi, i followed the instuctions thanks however i installed the brandnew WD 160 Hard drive and when i power on the box it gave me ER and start counting the number and then start with h 1 to 800. Pls help thanks

What's the model number of the new drive? Make sure all your connections are good. Why would you put in a 160 instead of say a 500 or 640, which would only be a few $ more?

Splash31,
Which instructions did you follow? I just did another drive cloning/replacement for a Digital Home forum member this week... it went flawlessly. Is your original hard drive dead? Did I miss that in this thread somewhere? Like 57 said, I don't see why you would replace the 8300HD's existing 160GB drive with another 160GB drive unless your first one died and you had another 160GB one lying around not in use. Otherwise, if you were buying a new one it wouldn't make any sense to buy another drive of the same size. Also, if your first drive had an actual hardware failure you wouldn't need to bother with the cloning process - your recordings would be lost.

Splash31, I believe it's normal to see error messages when installing a fresh drive that hasn't been cloned. As I recall, you will get an error message when first powering up followed by the hex countdown. The countdown may pause a few times before reaching 0000. The machine will then reboot itself and display an error something like HDDF followed by some additional activity. After a few minutes, you should get the time display. The entire process may take as long as 15 minutes to complete.

I just replaced the HD in my PVR and I wanted to pass along a big thanks to the people that contributed to this thead. Good explanations and pics made it easy.

One thing I did sort of miss was the box needs to be plugged into cable when you boot or it will continue to loop on boot up. Took me a little bit before I figured that out. Otherwise it was an easy upgrade. Thanks all.

I am about to get the WD Caviar Blue 500GB EIDE (WD5000AAKB). Just wondering if that is the most popular model as of late. Aside from the SATA adapter path.

Jake - yes, that is the particular drive I have installed most often. It seems to be the most readily available EIDE drive which works well for this application. Personally I have not gone the SATA/EIDE adapter route, I've stuck with EIDE drives.

The only reason I am going to do the upgrade to this drive is a large number of unrecoverable errors I have been getting.

I plan to clone the internal drive and see if my external drive contents remain linked. If it is I will keep the external drive offline until I want to watch one of the recorded shows then I will power it up watch the show then power it down afterwards. Should be an interesting test on the cloning capabilities.

Jake, if the cloning is done properly, there is no reason for things not to work exactly as you say. See my post earlier in this thread.

http://www.digitalhome.ca/forum/showthread.php?p=857671#post857671 And post 366 onwards.

It seems my 4 year old PVR is exhibiting the same symptoms as yours. I don't think you explicitly said if the external drive remained online afterwards but I assume from your post that was the case.

In post 371, I did say:

I took the PVR home, reconnected everything, including the eHDD and everything functions properly, with the index intact and my programmes all accessible.

Perhaps you missed that part of my lengthy post.

Ah yes now I see it. I am not used to seeing eHDD and my mind must have skipped that word. ;) Anyway it may be a few weeks before I get time to perform the transplant. But I will keep those posts in mind before I jump into the process. I have already decided to skip the acoustic management step.

slyboy or anyone that has experience with this... I've noticed that the PVR with the new WD5000AAKB drive is noticeably louder than the rental that I still have. Not the drive access clicking but just sitting there spinning idle.

Has anyone had any success with any techniques to quiet it down?
I thought I read somewhere about a utility available to lower the drive speed or something? Does that work and did it make a difference?
Any other ideas welcome.

First off, I want to thank everyone for their contributions to this thread/forum. Its great to know that there is such an active and supportive community here.

After reading 57's positive comments with respect to slyboy cloning and swapping his PVR drive, I contacted slyboy...

slyboy is very professional and his knowledge and technical expertise is really impressive. I was concerned that the new drive would be louder than the original, and slyboy right away offered up a solution. His fee is fair, he's reliable and he's quick on the turn around time. I highly recommended that anyone interested in having a clone and/or swap done contact him. Thanks again slyboy.

Leggy - You're quite welcome. I'm glad you were so pleased with the service and that you didn't have to lose any of those important recordings of yours! ;)


JST3 - Did you run any acoustic management software on the new drive? There is a setting on the hard drive firmware that I would suggest you change. Having said that, the drive isn't terribly noisy to begin with (although I would still lower the acoustic setting), so if your drive is OVERLY noisy all the time it is possible that you've got a bad drive. It's been known to happen. Did you buy a new drive, or <gasp> a reconditioned one? Having used this model of drive MANY times now I've never had a noise issue with any of them. If you've lowered the acoustic setting already and the drive is still really noisy I would return it. That's the best I can tell you given that I obviously cannot hear your drive to know if it's beyond what I would consider to be a "normal" noise level.

Yes, it's a new drive. How do I get at the acoustic mgmt settings? I d/l'ed a WD Data Lifegaurd application but I didn't see anything in there.

Edit: Just found the Hitachi Feature tool. going to try it out tonight.

Hi,
Does anybody know if you can upgrade HD PVR hard drive (160GB) to 1.5 Terra bites?

I bought the Apricorn 1.5T dvr expander, and although it works for a while, ater about a week or two, the HD PVR stops seeing the recordings on the external PVR. After rebooting the HD PVR, I need to reformat the external drive again loosing all the recordings ...

So it looks HD PVR does not support 1.5T, would I be able to take the drive from expander and replace the HD PVR one?

Thanks
Radu

As indicated in the following thread, a 1.5 GB eHDD has been tested/working. Your post was moved to the existing iHDD thread, no need for a new thread. It may not be possible to move the drive you have to the internal position because you need the correct type of drive, as discussed in this thread. Please read earlier posts here for the correct type of drive. Post 1 also links to a SATA adapter thread. You may wish to read the following thread as well regarding troubleshooting the eHDD - connections, signal strength, etc., since it should work.

http://www.digitalhome.ca/forum/showthread.php?t=23773

What's the exact make/model number of the DVR expander? Some have energy management which is not compatible with the SA8300HD, as discussed in post 1 of the link. Also, what's the make/model of the enclosure, if it was purchased separately.

Another convert here, bought the WD 500GB WD5000AAKB drive off the internet and did the swap today in my 8300HD. Since the TV season is over I didn't have anything important on the old drive so I didn't need to clone the contents.

Swapped the new drive in (following the great instructions on page 9 of this thread, took about 10 minutes) and after plugging the PVR back in, it only took about 15-20 minutes before I was ready to go.

Recorded 1 hr of HD and it shows only 1% full. I was regularly running out of space (we watch HD programming almost exclusively) so this will be a very useful upgrade. Thanks to all who contributed to this thread!!