Replacing drive in the SA430 PVR? - Page 2 - Canadian TV, Computing and Home Theatre Forums

scottboarder · 2011-04-24, 07:53 PM

more info on upgrading the CIS430 would be appriciated, is there a guide? is it as simple as swapping the connectors on the 5v/12v and mirroring the drive?

Dr.Dave · 2011-04-25, 08:41 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by poke

I upgraded my current TIVO hard drive to 1TB so am not too keen on going to 320GB when I switch to Telus.

You'll find that Telus records more hours/GB than TiVo since it stores the native datastream which is MPEG-4. TiVo series 2 encodes analog signals which takes more space. TiVo series 3 stores MPEG-2 OTA signals which take more space than MPEG-4. According to the Telus web site:

Quote:

Record up to 115 hours of HD programming or 295 hours of standard definition programming.

In addition, I would be leery of anyone claiming that they can expand a Mediaroom PVR to 2 TB, since I've read several places that the underlying OS (Windows CE 5) only supports drives up to about 500 GB. If you want to proceed, I would suggest using a drive designed for a PVR, preferably the same manufacturer and series as the original.

Meestor_X · 2011-04-25, 01:55 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Dr.Dave

since I've read several places that the underlying OS (Windows CE 5) only supports drives up to about 500 GB.

Where did you read that? Windows CE 5 has only a (theoretical) limit of 128 petabyes for the hd, using 48-bit LBA. If they happened to use FAT32, they'd be limited to 32gb partitions, so I doubt they did that. Where would a 500gb limit come from?

Dr.Dave · 2011-04-28, 12:16 AM

Meestor_X, most of the info I've seen on the subject has been AT&T Mediaroom users experimenting with upgrading their hard drives. My understanding is that Mediaroom allocates a small FAT partition and the remainder of the drive as FAT32 for storing the recordings.

Mediaroom preallocates the FAT32 partition with 1 GB files and does it's own file management, presumably to avoid fragmentation and improve performance.

The 32GB limit was introduced in Windows 2000, because performance can degrade with large drives in a general computer environment. Windows 98 FDISK could create FAT32 partitions up to 512GB. Perhaps Windows CE 5 has the same limitation.

kevinmuff · 2011-07-22, 08:31 AM

I just purchased a CIS 430 HD PVR, and noticed that the 320gb WD Blue HDD is very easily assessable.
Has anyone had any experience replacing the HDD with a bigger one?
Idealy, i would like to put at a 2TB HDD in, but im assuming ill be lucky if it even supports 1TB.
I have read some people talking about it before, but no one actually doing it.
Is it possible?

bimmerdriver · 2011-07-24, 05:07 PM

If you purchased the unit, you can remove the drive, clone it to a larger drive and see what happens. If it doesn't boot up, you could put the original drive back in. Of course, it's easy for me to say this, but I don't own my PVR and I don't want to deal with the consequences if it doesn't work.

2011-07-22, 08:31 AM	#20
kevinmuff Rookie Join Date: Jul 2011 Posts: 14	CIS 430 HDD Upgrade I just purchased a CIS 430 HD PVR, and noticed that the 320gb WD Blue HDD is very easily assessable. Has anyone had any experience replacing the HDD with a bigger one? Idealy, i would like to put at a 2TB HDD in, but im assuming ill be lucky if it even supports 1TB. I have read some people talking about it before, but no one actually doing it. Is it possible? Last edited by Dr.Dave; 2011-07-22 at 09:10 AM. Reason: Moved to existing thread

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2011-04-24, 07:53 PM	#16
scottboarder Rookie Join Date: Dec 2010 Posts: 9	more info on upgrading the CIS430 would be appriciated, is there a guide? is it as simple as swapping the connectors on the 5v/12v and mirroring the drive?

2011-04-28, 12:16 AM	#19
Dr.Dave Moderator Join Date: Aug 2005 Location: Winnipeg Posts: 4,696	Meestor_X, most of the info I've seen on the subject has been AT&T Mediaroom users experimenting with upgrading their hard drives. My understanding is that Mediaroom allocates a small FAT partition and the remainder of the drive as FAT32 for storing the recordings. Mediaroom preallocates the FAT32 partition with 1 GB files and does it's own file management, presumably to avoid fragmentation and improve performance. The 32GB limit was introduced in Windows 2000, because performance can degrade with large drives in a general computer environment. Windows 98 FDISK could create FAT32 partitions up to 512GB. Perhaps Windows CE 5 has the same limitation.

2011-07-24, 05:07 PM	#21
bimmerdriver Join Date: Jun 2011 Posts: 38	If you purchased the unit, you can remove the drive, clone it to a larger drive and see what happens. If it doesn't boot up, you could put the original drive back in. Of course, it's easy for me to say this, but I don't own my PVR and I don't want to deal with the consequences if it doesn't work.