I have just replaced the internal hard drive of my 8300HD with the Western digital WD5000AAKB. I followed the intructions show in this thread and I had no problem to do the job. My concern is about when I reconnect the box, the display shows a kind of count up begenning with the «h» letter. It is counting up since more than 1 hour now.

Is it normal ? I have put the jumper on the new hard drive to the same setting as the old (Cable select). On the WD5000AAKB, it is the first position out of 5 possible. Is it correct ?

Thank you for your answer.

From my earlier post, I just forgot to mention that when I reconnect my 8300HD after replacing the internal hard drive by a new one (WD5000AAKB), the display show «err.63» and after begin to count up. Is somebody know what is the meaning of that error ? Thank you.

When I did mine, there was a count, but I don't recall it being that long. I didn't move any jumpers.

I've installed dozens of those drives, including one for a guy on Thursday. The countdown is normal but it SHOULD NOT take that long. Something is wrong. Double check the jumper placement. It will be marked on the sticker on the top surface of that drive where the Cable Select jumper is located. It is on one end of the jumper pairs, but perhaps you have it on the wrong end... refer to the sticker.

Thank you for your answers. I finally found my problem. The cable connector (RG59) was defective. The central conductor was almost broken and bent at the bottom of the connector. There was therefore no signal transmit to the decoder so it could not initialize. I replaced the connector and my device was initialized in a few minutes.

Thank you very much for your help.

Did my 8300HD HDD upgrade a few days ago. I used Active Boot Disk 5.0.10 to make a boot disk. Unplugged all of my other drives and used the Clone Disk feature to do a sector by sector clone. Took about 2 hrs 50 min. to clone the original WD1600AAJB to the WD5000AVJB. Put it back in the 8300HD and it began to count down. After count down and system boot all worked very well. This drive is quiet! No different than the original. Now I don't need to worry about space.
Thanks to those who pioneered this swap!!:D

Thanks to those who pioneered this swap!

Hard to believe it has been over 6 years now (this thread). :o

Out of the two 8300HDs I've upgraded, one of them developed a sleep issue a few months back, and it has never gone away. I mentioned it before in one of the threads here, but nobody else seems to have had the same issue. (I'm talking about the internal drive replacement, not an external drive add-on.)

After I turn off the unit, sometime during the night it turns itself back on. This isn't a big deal since on and off are basically the same power anyway, but it does cause a bit of an annoyance with my Logitech Harmony remote. Cuz if the PVR is already on, the power toggle to turn on my components will shut off the 8300 HD. I usually have to go to the extra step of re-turning back on the 8300 HD.

The curious part is that didn't happen immediately after I upgraded the unit. It only happened months later. Thus, I have to wonder if it's the drive, or if it's something amiss in the PVR itself. However, other than that small quirk, it works completely normally.

I don't think this has anything to do with your iHDD, however, check under the settings for "timer: wake-up".

http://www.digitalhome.ca/forum/showthread.php?p=1166950#post1166950

After I turn off the unit, sometime during the night it turns itself back on. This isn't a big deal since on and off are basically the same power anyway, but it does cause a bit of an annoyance with my Logitech Harmony remote. Cuz if the PVR is already on, the power toggle to turn on my components will shut off the 8300 HD. I usually have to go to the extra step of re-turning back on the 8300 HD.
It would be really nice for the next generation of the 8300/8642 to have discrete on/off IR codes which would allow seamless control with programmable remote controls. The architects of these boxes must not have HT systems with single universal remote controls.

^^^^
That would have to go back to the manufacturers of the various appliances. The universal remotes have to mimic the original remote. Also, I don't think I've ever seen a remote with separate on & off buttons. They've always toggled on/off state. In fact, I don't recall seeing separate on & off buttons on the appliance front panels either.

I don't think this has anything to do with your iHDD, however, check under the settings for "timer: wake-up".

http://www.digitalhome.ca/forum/show...50#post1166950Ah, brilliant! That was set somehow, yet I didn't set it. Hopefully that will solve the problem.

That would have to go back to the manufacturers of the various appliances. The universal remotes have to mimic the original remote. Also, I don't think I've ever seen a remote with separate on & off buttons. They've always toggled on/off state. In fact, I don't recall seeing separate on & off buttons on the appliance front panels either.
Separate on/off buttons are rare, but I do note that a few of my devices do have seperate on and off command codes, even if it's not on the remote. Dunno why, but they do.

My Scientific Atlanta 8300HD+ (320 GB) from Videotron was not working acceptably anymore, so I undertook the task of fixing it. Many thanks to those who took the time on the forum to describe their approach.

I didn't see a step-by-step version of what I did, so here's my contribution, perhaps it will help somebody who doesn't have time to wade through tons of posts. It describes how I did my internal drive replacement with succcess.

- remove the defective internal drive (open the 8300HD with the Torx Tamperproof T10 screwdriver bit, 99 cents at Outils Berger).
- decide if you want to test what you think is the cause of your trouble (hint: it might be a waste of time, it was for me)
- if so, do the steps labeled T- below:
T- set up your computer with IDE connectors
T- use the 8300HD ribbon cable, and plug a power cable to the internal drive
T- boot into Windows XP
T- download and run Western Digital Data Lifeguard Tools
T- run each test (especially the Extended Test). It's many hours.
T- if it says FAIL, you are lucky. You have confirmed your internal drive is bad, and you can confidently spend time and money on a new replacment drive (I got a PASS, so I had no confidence my time and money was going to change anything. In the end, it did though.)
- get this Western Digital 500 GB IDE drive: WD5000AAKB ($90 at Microbytes)
- decide if you want to preserve your existing recordings. If so, do the P- steps below:
P- download Active Boot Disk
P- plug in a 256MB CompactFlash to a Sandisk USB reader, into the computer
P- run the software so that it turns the compactflash into a bootable drive
P- enter your BIOS and tell it to boot from USB
P- unplug your Windows XP boot drive for simplicity and prevent accidents
P- plug in the new IDE drive to the secondary port (perhaps removing the CDROM cable from that port). Hopefully you have the appropriate high-speed IDE cable, it doesn't come from with the new drive!
P- Confirm that the computer is now ready to do cloning, as it has 1) a USB boot drive with the cloning software on it; 2) a primary IDE drive to clone from; 3) a secondary IDE drive to clone to. Run this software, which will take hours.
- decide if you want to further test the new drive, if so do the T- steps above, and hope for a PASS. If you get a FAIL, go back to the store and start again.
- Put the new drive into the 8300HD
- Boot the 8300HD and hope your problems are gone a couple of years.
P- Go to your recorded programs and see how many are playable. This surely depends on how badly corrupted the defective drive was.

A few notes:
- I had added an external drive (500 GB SATA, Western Digital WD5000AAKS, with an Antec Veris MX-1 eSATA enclosure) when I realized that the 320 GB internal drive was filling up all the time, requiring time-consuming cleaning of shows
- The 8300HD records onto the emptiest of the two drives. If you analyse the process of recording and then erasing shows over months/years, you will realize that it means that under these (normal) circumstances, you will never be able to tell on which drive a show is recorded (unless you are crazy enough to rig up your own HDD activity lights and do your own monitoring and note-taking). If you are having record/playback problems, you will never be able to determine which drive is at fault, because a) if you unplug the internal drive, you can't use the PVR recording; b) if you unplug the external drive, you will indeed only be able to playback internal drive recordings, but you can't know for sure which ones those are. Which means you cannot deduce where the defective nonplayable records are located.
In my case, our 114 shows, of which around half became unplayable, caused me to try and deduce which drive is the culprit, so hopefully the above conclusion will save you the time.
- The step-by-step above can be used for testing the external drive too

So there you have it. Congratulate yourself on having increased your recording capacity in the process. The one store that has the monopoly on 8300HD repairs in the entire province of Quebec wants about $200 for at most putting back a same-sized drive (160 or 320 GB).

I would like to take this opportunity to severely blast the people at Scientific Atlanta and Videotron for failing to provide adequate drive diagnostics into the 8300HD:
- detailed error log missing for technicians and enthusiasts to pinpoint problems. Any request from the user to playback or record a show, which results in either a black screen, or the "please hit LIST" screen, should be accompanied by detailed error log stored somewhere. Anywhere.
- the diagnostics pages (38 of them) were completely useless in the diagnostic of this drive problem, which is reprehensible. It says 0 bad blocks.
- unable to boot completely from the external eSata drive (no valid technical reason for this, folks). This would allow us to bypass internal drive failures by unplugging them. On a positive note, the unit boots into a non-PVR mode when there is no drive anywhere (internal or external) so the tuner works but naturally can't record anything. Didn't pay $700 for that however.
- no built-in self test that you can initiate, for validating the drives (whether internal or external). There should be one for testing 100% of each drive. Each PVR should have a quality assurance label indicating that it was performed with success on the included internal drive.
- no remote drive testing either (via cable company remote access. Yet they can access lots of data on everybody's units)

If the 8300HD cost the same as a DVD player, it would be a different story, and our expectations could be lowered, but the 8300HD is still sold at an outrageous high price (with no yearly price reductions which are seen in every other electronics field) given its technological age. This is surely the result of a near-monopoly. It is absolutely amazing that Scientific Atlanta has not come out with significant new hardware at lower prices or higher features, and that Videotron has not sought out competing manufacturers to have that happen. There won’t be much remorse when cable companies disappear, giving way someday to a future internet that conveniently provides each and every new HD show freely to any PC, iPhone, or internet-ready TV.

Great 1st post Jean.

If you are having record/playback problems, you will never be able to determine which drive is at fault

Just to let you know you can disconnect your eHDD and playback a recording that is on the iHDD. You may have to try a few from the LIST before you find one that does not bump you back out to the LIST. Also, if you leave the eHDD LED connected you can determine if it is accessing the drive as the LED will flicker.

looked at page 9 of this forum. the upgrade seems easy
just like adding a hard drive to computer
I had a apricot 500 pvr extender and it just died ( it also had wd 5000aaks)
question
1. Is it as easy as taking out the 160 and replaceing with wd 5000aaks

you don t have to load the hard drive with like software??

2 has anyone loaded Western Digital AV-GP WD10EURS 1TB 64MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive -Bare Drive

3 anyone have any luck with just buying the western digital my pvr extender ( which already comes in case)

thks
rising1000

rising1000, please start at post 1:

Regarding your questions 1, 2 & 3: SATA drives will not work internally without a SATA adaptor, discussed in the thread specifically designed for that option - link in post 1.

If you want an internal drive, without the SATA adaptor, you need a PATA (IDE) drive like the WD5000AAKB - price around $90.

3. If you want to use an external HDD, then read the thread on the eHDD in this forum and ask your questions there - yes that drive would work as an eHDD, however, there are less expensive options as discussed in that thread.

wd5000aakb is only $45. but are you saying all i have to do is take out the 160 meg hard drive and insert the 500 gig in its place . no software has to be like added etc
just replace the hard drive and good to go

Yep, that simple, provided you don't mind losing your recordings. $45? Make sure you've got the right model number - AAKB, not S.

Has anyone here tried a laptop hard drive? I'm thinking of swapping the hard drive. I tried the PVR in my bedroom, but my wife complained that it's too loud (I can sleep through the noise). I haven't opened up the PVR, so I don't know which model is in there - it's a 160GB drive.

I'm thinking of picking up the WD3200BEVE, but I wanted some opinions before I made the leap. I know the most popular drive here is the WD5000AAKB, but I want the quiestest drive.

Here are the acoustics on the WD3200BEVE:
Idle Mode 22 dBA (average)
Seek Mode 0 25 dBA (average)

Here are the acoustics on the WD5000AAKB:
Idle Mode 28 dBA (average)
Seek Mode 0 33 dBA (average)
Seek Mode 3 29 dBA (average)

I already picked up a 2.5"->3.5" adapter off ebay, so I'm ready to get the WD3200BEVE. I just wanted to know if there's any reliability issues with the WD3200BEVE before I proceed.

Thanks for any input!

pclam,
You can put your 8300 into diagnostic mode (see here (http://www.digitalhome.ca/forum/showpost.php?p=134376&postcount=1)) to find out what drive model is currently installed, without having to open the case. Then check that drive's acoustic spec's to make sure it's not already close to the new ones you're looking at.

You might also want to consider the 500G 3.5" WD5000AVJB.
Idle Mode 25 dBA (average)
Seek Mode 26 dBA (average)

Or, if capacity isn't an issue, (and you can find one) the 160G 3.5" WD1600AVJB
Idle Mode 24 dBA (average)
Seek Mode 25 dBA (average)