SA8000/8300HD - Internal Hard Disk Upgrade Works (Cloning too) See Post 1.

[ruby1308]

holly molly buzz, what a mess.....

I'm going to have to presume that apart from the last picture which looks like the Western Digital we are all talking about (the new one that will go into the pvr) that none of the other 2 pictures represent the hard disk that is still in your pvr and which you want to duplicate.

If so, disconnect everything from your computer and PLEASE make a note of how you were connected in the first place. Don't disconnect the dvd drive which I think is connected to your secondary ide/pata.

If you look at what is connected to your motherboard, you should have a large pata cable running from your motherboard to your dvd/cd drive, this ould be your secondary drive, your primary drive at this point I really don't know how you're hooked up but it doesn't matter. What matter is that you see on the motherboard another pata connector which is the primary. Either you have a ribbon or you don't. Either way, you need a ribbon which at one end connects to your motherboard primary ide and on that ribbon, you will have 2 other connectors, connect the 2 pata drives to the connectors. Before you do that and I think this is your question, how do you place the jumpers on the drives.

I presume you have the WD drive, click on this link and look at the picture of how to jump it for dual master.

http://wdc.custhelp.com/cgi-bin/wdc....p?p_faqid=1542

you should even have that image on the drive itself.

then

the other drive which I assume is a Maxtor, well, look at the label of that drive and I think with no jumpers, it's a slave but you should find the drive in question either at Maxtor or wherever and you can easily find jumper settings.

Once connected, boot with Acronis in the drive, and follow instruction in the previous post.

If the above is not clear, I think you should describe how you are connected now and what does what...

Edit: ACRONIS True Image has been reported as not working properly.

[buzzinhornets]

i'm using two of the 3.5 IDE adapters, which, in essence, make both the current 160gb drive inside my machine (maxtor) and the 500gb wd new drive act like an external USB drive (like you'd find in an external enclosure).

so, pretend i took both the old and new and stick them into 2 free usb enclosures then try to clone... is the jumper thing gonna make a difference or is the cloning good enough pretending like they're just usb drives?

these USB to IdE adapters are in the mail so i'm not sure what will happen when i get them...

[ruby1308]

ok, starting to understand, boy are you complicating things...

First of all, your computer, is it a desktop or a laptop, I have to ask because who knows, anything can happen and I don't know how you ended up buying the adapters.

Second of all, if you have a desktop computer, you don't need the adapters, just do what I said before.

Third, you're making this very very difficult, you must be pulling our leg.

Fourth, in the event you are not, and, in the event that you connect everything and in the event that you see all the hard disks in your bios, it then does not matter how your jumpers/shunt are set, if you know which hard disk is what, then boot with Acronis in your dvd drive, clone the Maxter (that you took out of the pvr) to the Western Digital, at the end, shut the power off, Take the Western Digital out of your system, put the shunt in CABLE SELECT mode, put it in the pvr and it will work.

Edit: ACRONIS True Image has been reported as not working properly.

[ruby1308]

Originally Posted by buzzinhornets

hmm... cloning, eh? i already have 3 drives in my pc, so i'd have to buy something like a "ide/sata to usb 2.0" adapter and clone it that way. but that'd cost another $30 i think at tigerdirect, so i guess i'll just lose everyything and start fresh. this 'hobby' is already getting too expensive.

Buzz,

Reading your posts backward now, if you clone your new 500 properly, install it in the pvr, connect your esata (you did not say but I presume it's an external esata) 500 and you should not loose anything on either disks. You do not have to reformat the external once you restart the pvr, this way, you will have exactly what you had before only with more blank space on the internal drive.

Now, it's not a major thing to simply disconnect the existing drives in your pc. Disconnect both the power and the pata ribbon, don't unscrew your drives from the bay, put a manual or anything you can use to lie your 2 extra hd on, connect the to the power and ribbon once your have the jumpers properly shunted and 15 or so minutes later, you're done, this is the simplest method. You don't even need to make a change in your bios, it will do it automatically. Using your usb, i really not sure of what you will see and get as a result.

[rfielder]

One thing I don't understand - will the cloning process extend the PVR's file system to the entire new drive?

I am not clear what file system is used in the 8300HD PVR's. Is this something like NTFS or Fat32? Or it is proprietary?

[Bplayer]

The cloning process copies your existing index and recordings. The PVR determines the actual space available from the size of the HDD, so your entire drive will be used. The file system is proprietary.

[rfielder]

Originally Posted by Bplayer

The cloning process copies your existing index and recordings. The PVR determines the actual space available from the size of the HDD, so your entire drive will be used. The file system is proprietary.

Sorry if I seem dense, but I would rather look stupid than assume I know what you mean and make a stupid mistake.

My issue is with the rest of the disk space -if the drive has not been fully formatted, how can the rest of the drive include the proprietary disk format?

In other words - if you copy 140Gb worth of shows from the 160Gb drive in the PVR to a new 500Gb drive, then put the 500Gb drive into the PVR, the rest of the drive will not have been formatted.

How can the PVR use the space on the drive if that space has not been formatted?

[ruby1308]

The moderator has not release what I posted this morning probably because I'm still a junior member but Pplayer is correct and trust us when we say you gonna see what we say.

And, on top of that, this is reversable in the first place. Clone the drive, put it in the system, boot, see, just for fun, reboot, see again.

You're not satisfied or have a problem, put the old disk back in the pvr.

[ruby1308]

Ah...I see my last post, probably he will release the other one later on because it was a wee bit longer.

As to my previous post sorry make that Bplayer.

In regards to formatting, you are taking for granted that it's like a hard disk, you have to format the disk before being able to use it.

Don't know if you have Roxio Media Creator but I will use this as an example, you can copy to a DVD/CD RW or R and it will only format what it needs to copy at that point. The pvr is probably doing the same, formatting as it goes along and is needed. Anyway, either way, we do see the increase and were able to use it, so trust us.

[57]

ruby1308, there is no previous unapproved post today. All of your posts are here. You can see them by clicking quick links - my posts.

[ruby1308]

then, I must have clicked at the wrong place, but what I said, I will only repeat one thing that according to their documentation, you cannot take a hard disk from a pvr and see what's on it when put into another pvr therefore, it's a proprietary file system and on top of that takes into account some internal code.

[jlet]

Rfielder, very few (if any) Disk Operating Systems (DOS) require every single tracks/sectors to be pre-formatted. They only need to pre-format the index then format the other tracks/sectors as needed.

[jem]

Hokey smokes. I just the upgrade to a Seagate 750gb 7200rpm drive. According to the HDD Info screen (pg 33), I now have 698gb of free space on the drive. Woo hoo! I'll keep everyone posted as to how it performs.

[jem]

I seem to be getting a lot of pixelation now that the new drive is up and running. Opinions, anyone?

[Jake]

Try different HD channels and try SD channels. It could be the source. Report your findings. Also please confirm you have the ST3750640A model.