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Replacing and upgrading the DVR530 Hard Drive (will Void your warranty!)

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#1 · (Edited by Moderator)
About the Author and this thread - ARR is a former Shaw employee who worked for several years assisting the Star Choice team that developed and tested the Star Choice DVR530. He previously posted on the Digital Forum as digitaldude.

This is a revisit of a topic discussed in previous posts and hopes to shed some clarity for those interested.

DISCLAIMER: If your unit is under WARRANTY, then this procedure is NOT recommended.

A little history:

The very initial hard drive in DSR530's were Maxtor, but never went into production with that model as it proved unreliable and not up to the task.

The CE version was chosen for it reliability and performance.
Read the specs here: http://www.seagate.com/docs/pdf/datasheet/disc/ds_ce.pdf

A little known fact is that ~ 30K 'special' dsr530's were shipped with the Seagate 250GB hard drives for in house use at a major N.A. auto manufacture that operates their own DCII transponder and had been using Moto DSR4XX units, but needed a DVR and the 530 was the ONLY DCII DVR around.

While its easy to criticize Moto/*C for selecting the 160GB, initial plans which I took over spec'ing originally had the 80GB and the 120GB was only a consideration as they were being used by the cable HD PVR's and only recently in the DCT6416 went to 160GB. I examined the cost and made a case for our current 160GB, so be thankful we got that.


continued....
 
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#109 ·
Just thinking out loud... I wonder if you could use a USB 2.0 external HD enclosure with RAID 1 (mirroring). Once you get authorized by *C, then remove one of the disks. You would now have two disks authorized. Or you can keep them configured as a RAID to protect your recordings.

I don't own a 530, but I am seriously thinking about getting one to do this mod.
 
#110 ·
All neat ideas....

But authorizing a 2nd disk doesn't like sound like much of a big deal according to the instructions.

I like the idea of a RAID mirror, but I'd be more concerned about loosing the box than the drives themselves.

I thought I read that the recordings were married to the machine through some encryption key, so if the machine got replaced, your precious recordings would be toast anyways.
 
#112 ·
I received my hdd, installed and everything works ok.

Question though - If your box fails, you can stick the old drive back in and get *C to replace it. But then if you put the new hd in another box, you would need to do the factory reset and re-authorization to get it working. But then you lose all your recordings. Could you do the factory reset using the 'keep contents' option?
 
#113 ·
My understanding MAV, is that the recordings are encoded and decoded using an encryption key that is unique to each box. That means that the new box could not read the old recordings encrypted on the old box. Only the old box with its unique encryption key could. All this stupidity just so that the media companies can make as much money as possible...
 
#116 ·
I must be the luckiest S.O.B. on the planet! I already had my case-cracking tool at the ready when I received my Seagate DB35 750GB. Everything came apart like warm butter on toast, including the heat sink tape and the circuit board. Popped the new drive in, complete installation took maybe 15 to 20 minutes. I hooked everything back up and did the reset. After it booted back up, I noticed I was still receiving my subscribed channels, even though my system status said "U" instead of "S". I hesitated to call for a rehit and patiently watched the news. Within about 30 to 45 minutes, I checked system status again, and my trip counter had moved to "1" and was now Subscribed, and the clock was set. WHEW!! I did notice it took at least an hour before the recording functions were working, maybe because the new drive was still formatting, but everything works, with 130 hours of HD recording space. A million thanks to everyone in this forum who tested and guided me through this amazing upgrade!

LarryM
 
#117 ·
Quick question to anyone who has successfully done the hard drive upgrade...
Have you noticed a direct correlation between stability and the hard drive swap?
By this I mean... after the F0 update I've noticed the random reboots are more common with my 530... not unbearable but there has been more than once where my wife would be perusing the guide and the box would reset, she'd go back to the guide once it repopulates itself and then the box would reset again. This causes me grief because she'll look at me and complain that my old system (a hand built Knoppmyth system never restarted for months and months).
I've got a Seagate 500 gig drive in a server that would be a PITA to swap into the 530 but if it'd improve stabilty I'd do it in a heartbeat.
TIA...
 
#118 ·
Upgrade and duplication effort

So my 750 gig finally came in. I got tired of waiting for NCIX (2 mos) and ordered from a shop in the US. It was about the same price, but got here in a week.
I then followed up with the idea of sector copying my old drive so I wouldn't lose any stuff on my old drive. I discovered that in order for my computer system to recognise the drive, I had to turn off any large block access and other "speed" options for the drive, rather than leaving things in default or auto. The duplication then worked like a charm, but with one major issue. The partition size on the new drive was duplicated as well. Due to the type of file system, I could not resize the partition in the duplication effort, regardless of which program I tried. I even tried Acronis, which is one of the most powerful programs I'm aware of. No luck.
So after all that effort, I to just ended up with a new clean drive with tons of space. I also had an issue with frequent reboots initially. I decided to reformat the drive a second time and bingo, all problems seem to have disappeared.
As an aside, I actually had another hicup. When I put the drive in my machine, it went to the perpetual reboot... blue lights and nothing else. I popped in my old drive and same thing. I had been having some occasional weird problems with it before the upgrade, so after some time with *Choice support, we determined it had just died a regular death as so many others have.
I have a second 530, so I popped the new drive in there, and all is well.
By the way, the place I got the drive (the special PVR model) is ComputerHq.
Good luck to all who plan to do this upgrade.

Fww:cool:
Good luck to all
 
#120 ·
I already sent a message to cancel. Thanks Dog Byte anyway.
Looks like all is not 100% here though. I've discovered that a small proportion of recordings are badly pixilated (both video and audio are affected). It's only about 1 in 10, but has no factor associated that I can figure out. I'll record 3 one half hour shows the same day, on the same channel, and the first and third will be perfect, and the second is trash. I've tried a soft reboot but the problem is still there. Anyone have any suggestions?

FWW
 
#122 ·
fww

I have somewhere between 200-250 ( too many!!!) recorded programs , and haven't noticed any of the problems you are experiencing. Maybe its a problem with "your" DVR530 or hard drive. The only "problem" I notice is the more programs you record the longer it takes to open your DVR list. I guess because it has to scan all the recorded programs in your list 1st.
 
#123 ·
Be careful when you fill your DVR list. The DSR530's use LoD (Live on Disk) which records 90 mins of buffer time on whatever channel you are watching. This requires disk space, if the drive is too full it can cause problems. The solution... *C wipes your HDD...

Just be careful, or disable LoD...
 
#124 ·
Pixelation

Well, I guess I just have bad luck. I checked other threads here for the problem and it exists on some machines and is a rare video processor problem. I confirmed it when my replacement machine (for the one that died last week) came in. I moved my 750 gig from my second 530 into this new one and no problems. I put the old drive back in the second 530 and it's pixelated. Obviously not related to the drive. Geez. Two 530s in my house and both have issues the same week and both unrelated to the upgrade. I should buy a lottery ticket with those odds... or two. I'd win both. Thanks for everyone's input.
 
#129 ·
I was getting ready to swap in a spare 7200 250GB I had laying around and it died before I could give it a try. Too many crashes/reboots.
This was my 2nd 530.

Can anybody tell the the Unit Address prefix of the latest units?

Weren't the phase 1 & 2's 3433 and 3434 or something like that?

I wonder if it's the E4/F0 code that's causing all the reboots that kills them off or bad flash chips.

Anybody have a NEW model that's solid?

I'd be willing to go buy a NEW one if I knew if was worth it. I really like the unit a lot. Especially the latest guide and I hear lots more cool stuff to come.
 
#130 ·
I'd like to 2nd Arthur's question about the "new" DVR530's which I believe have unit ID's of 3435. Any better news about them? As mines a 3433 ,also known as a "once a day CRASH" door stop.
 
#132 · (Edited)
I have 2 of the more recent 530's and have had very few problems with them. One has a unit address starting with 03434 (a replacement I received last year) and the other has a unit address starting with 03435 (a replacement I received this year).
The most noticeable problem with new unit (03435) is that the optical audio port is defective. I tried several different quality toslink cables without any success. None of the cables were secure in the unit and it caused drop outs of audio channels (On one audio system it caused a clicking noise from time to time and loss of audio channels. When I replaced the audio system the new system would not click but it also lost audio channels.) The only fix was to use the co-ax digital audio output.

Perhaps my two 530's are more stable than others because I keep both cooled with lap top coolers. I have a cooler under each 530 and I power them with the 530's usb port.

I have no desire at this time to replace the hard drives. If I only had one unit I might consider it.
 
#134 ·
I have that device, or something similar...its awesome, as I can hook up hard drives from my Pcs and laptops no problems. I do this when I trouble shoot peoples computers they give me (to fix) aswell.

Thanks for all the info about upgrading hard drives on the 530...will do it , and report back too!
 
#135 ·
My 750 on my new machine is now very stable... yey!
In terms of file transfer, the product you refer to works quite well, but I had no success in having any ability to "see" the files for transfer due to the unique file system used. It was mentioned earlier in this thread, but it is not a windows based file system (or any other common file system), so file by file transfer could be difficult. I haven't found a way. If someone else finds a way, please post it. As I mentioned earlier in this thread, sector copying the HD also doesn't solve the problem because partition sizes remain the same, so your new "big" drive appears the same size as your old drive.
 
#136 ·
Couple of questions for those of you who have already done the upgrade.

1. Did you use a specific hard drive? as in rpm?? was it seagate?
what about this one? ST3500630A?

2. The security bit, does anyone else know where to get one (Thinking Calgary) or is it best to just order it from the webpage supplied at the begining?


Thanks
 
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