8300HD - Internal SATA Hard Disk adapter Upgrade

[corolla]

Hi, time to share my experience:
Some time ago, I've got an IDE to SATA adapter at one of the computer stores on Kennedy, with the idea of switching to a bigger SATA HDD.
Model: CABL-IDE-SATA-01 with Marvell 88SA8040 Chipset.





I've got also the Western Digital Caviar Blue (WD10EALS) 1000GB (1TB) SATAII 7200RPM 32MB.
A quick search for the adapter model, and I found a very similar one, with more detailed specs, stating clear that the adapter supports SATA 1, so, I had to jumper the HDD, to cripple the speed to SATA1.
After waging a war with my dragon lady, I’ve got permission to do the update.
Because the HDD was an open box, unsealed, I’ve decided to test it first, together with the adapter in one of mine computers.
The HDD was detected properly by the BIOS and passed any WD test. I went further, and I installed Win XP from scratch on that hard drive.
Everything worked fine, the HDD paired well with the adapter, without any errors.
Next step, installing the HDD and the adapter inside the 8300HD box was a breeze.

Playing a HD show, while another two being recorded, revealed just two or three glitches, under one second, half hour apart, nothing major.
After a week or so, the HDD was at 10%, but the quality of playing degraded. More and more glitches, five to ten minutes apart, even without any recording overlapping.
Funny thing though, the problem was reading from the HDD, because, I checked rewinding most of the glitches, and the recording was clear.

Wife unhappy, I was in danger of sleeping on the porch, so I’ve got the Western Digital Caviar Blue (WD5000AAKB) 500GB IDE 7200RPM 16MB Buffer.
Tried to clone the 1TB SATA drive on the new 500GB IDE.
Tried first with the dd command, after seven hours I gave up
Tried again with the active boot disk, took several hours. I put the cloned HDD into the Rogers box, and the box didn’t recognize the file system and reformatted the drive.

Apparently cloning works only from a smaller HDD to one the same size or bigger.
Sorry for the long post.

[Jake]

Apparently cloning works only from a smaller HDD to one the same size or bigger

Yes because the entire drive is cloned (1TB) not just the portion that contains valid data.

[boum]

This is a follow-up on post #301.

Well, after using it for 4 months, I decided to remove my 1 TB drive and the IDE2SAT25. Besides the occasional sound glitches (maybe on 10% of the recordings, and rewind and play back again would sound ok), the main issue was that programmed recordings were stopped at some point before the end of the show for no apparent reason. This happened about 5 times.

Since this is unacceptable to me, and because the external hard drive way is apparently not reliable anymore with Videotron, I decided to install a Western digital WD5000AAKB 500gb IDE and call it a day.

[bgclarke]

Originally Posted by Jake

Of the 4 posted only mine is reliable and it is the oldest judging from the PWB sequence. Plus it does not have the TPS5130 (Non-Isolated Switching DC/DC Regulator).

Search didn't turn up anything other than the partially quoted original message from January 2010.

Other than Jakes non-TPS board, has it been determined which PVR mainboard versions actually work "properly"?
Is it the TPS that's the issue or just the chipset revisions, or a combination?

I installed a 500 GB PATA drive in my PVR yesterday and took note of the mainboard version while I had it apart.

Mine is "Explorer 8KG3 REV2 W/TPS5130 PWB 4013514_A".

I'm not worried about it now, but thinking a number of years down the road, should my PATA drive fail and I need to replace it - what my options would be (other than buying a new PVR) since PATA drives are already disappearing and will be a thing of the past by then.

[Jake]

I no longer own that unit. I sold it to another Illico subscriber. It continues to work well for them. I suspect it is a combination of hardware. That is the chipsets. Sorry I can't offer much help. The newer models are using SATA drives internally so it may be time in a few years to sell or trade up rather than find a 500GB drive. But I am sure you will be able to locate a used 500GB IDE drive in 10 years.

[mchevrier]

I had already bought this disk (before discovering this forum) and could not find anything on this model so I decided to go head anyways and try replacing my old 320gb with the WD10EALX 1 TB. My local store did not have the IDE2SAT25, only the IDE2SAT, again another uncharted territory. It's been a week now and it is running well. I do hear a high pitch noise, but it is not very loud, so totally bearable. So I thought I would share my experience. When installed, it formatted the disk immediately, it had to reboot a few times and it ended with ER : 53. After that it stopped. I unpluggfed it and plugged it back, it has been runing perfectly since then. I have a SA 8300HD+.

[mchevrier]

Update : Last night I experienced my first pixelisation. It lasted about 5 seconds. The disk was 80% full, that is a lot of HD tennis recorded... Luckilly none of the recorded Big Bang Theory are presenting that behavior.

[Eug]

I was curious about the different model Startechs, so I looked it up:

IDE2SAT25:
Jmicron JM20330 chipset.
Backordered on their website.

IDE2SAT:
Marvell 88SA8052 chipset.
Has SATA + power combo to also support 2.5" SATA drives.
In stock on their site, but over 30% more expensive.