8300HD - Internal SATA Hard Disk adapter Upgrade

[boum]

My external hard drive setup has recently become unreliable apparently due to some newer 8300HD firmware update pushed by Videotron. I lost three times all my recordings on the external hard drive in two months. So after reading this thread and an eSata compatibility database for the SA8300HD, I decided to install an internal drive with a StarTech IDE2SAT25 adapter and get rid of the external drive.

I chose a Western Digital Caviar Black WD1001FALS 1 TB. I picked that drive over the Caviar Green 1 TB drive often referred to on this thread as it appears that Vidéotron clients had little success with these, while most WD1001FALS users reported success.

I tried a few times to record two channels at once while playing back a recording without seeing any glitches in the any of the three programs involved in the test. My only issue so far is that most of the time the reset (pressing vol-, vol+, and info) will result with a "Er.53" that will require another reset or unplugging the power cord.

I've been using this setup for 4 days now without a single glitch (besides the reset issue).

My explorer has this printed on the main board:
Explorer 8KG3 Rev 2 W/TPS5130
PWB 4013514_A

My IDE2SAT25 adapter also emits the high-pitched sound which I find quite irritating at times. Enough so that I think I'll order a few cheaper adapters and see if I can find another one that works silently. What should I expect from the ones that are not compatible? A lot of blocking and sound cuts in the recordings, or the SA 8300HD will simply fail to detect the hard drive?

[Jake]

What should I expect from the ones that are not compatible

Image and sound break-ups mainly. The sound from the adapter is most likely from a bad cap. Mine is silent.

[the_beast_gl]

Hi,

It's my first post.

I got ENP 8300HD with 160gb hard drive. My warranty ended (5 year old enp). I want to upgrade recording space, but my main concern is having no issue over long time.

I read most of the topic on this ENP, so I want to know since how much time your setup running without any issue.

So at my understanding :

Option A : Western digital WD5000AAKB 500gb IDE
Issue : ???
sucess rate : 100%

Option B : StarTech IDE2SAT25 / WD10EADS
Issue : Chances of disc corruption after more than a year, High pich noise form capacitor in many cases
sucess rate : 90%

Option C : StarTech IDE2SAT25 / WD15EADS
Issue : Many fail after reaching 50% full
sucess rate : 50%

Option C : StarTech IDE2SAT25 / WD20EADS or other brand disc
Issue : Many fail after some times
sucess rate : 10%

Option D : Ebay Sata to IDE converter / WD10EADS
Issue : Many glitches
sucess rate : 25%

Did I miss some new or low fail rate setup?

thanks for advice

[lss122]

beast,

Looks like you have all the facts right!!

I have been trying to decide between the internal 500gb and the external 1TB.

By the sounds of it any internal setup other than the 500gb will fail or have glitches at some point!! And the external 1TB is the largest you can go without errors. Biggest problem is finding a drive/enclosure combo that works for your unit. Some have had success with 1.5TB but not many.

[Jake]

Nice summary Beast. I think option B is about 50% or less. But I would not worry about the high-pitched sounds from the adapter. That is not normal. Seeing the occasional err53 is normal though with the adapter (a cold reboot fixes it). With the internal 500GB PATA it is a set it and forget it solution (just don't use Seagate drives). Plus you have about 60 hours of recording with 500GB. I find scanning through the list of recordings starts to get annoying after 50 or so.

Internal PATA Upgrade Thread
http://www.digitalhome.ca/forum/showthread.php?t=15719

[Bplayer]

Originally Posted by the_beast_gl

I got ENP 8300HD with 160gb hard drive. My warranty ended (5 year old enp). I want to upgrade recording space, but my main concern is having no issue over long time.

My recommendation would be Option A first. If your current HD has been in use for 5 year it could be close to end of life. Then add an external if/when you then find the need for additional space.

Remember that a failure of the intenal drive or PVR internals will mean a loss of ALL recordings, both internal and external. With this in mind, consider your PVR as temporary storage facility that you could loose at any time. Do not get attached to your collection of recordings.

[hddi]

Hi guys,
Firstly, I want to thank all the members who contributed to this forum. Your posts helped me upgrade internal HDD from 160GB to 500GB as well as set up an external HDD on my SA8300HD over the past few years.

My question is: Did anyone try cloning internal HDD to a drive larger than 500GB? I know there is only one Seagate IDE 750GB model but I followed the thread Internal SATA Hard Disk adapter Upgrade in this forum and installed an internal 1TB SATA drive (WD10EACS) with StarTech IDE2SAT25 (IDE motherboard to SATA drive) adapter, and everything works fine. PVR formats the drive and sees the full 1TB capacity.

The issue arouse after I cloned the old 500GB drive (WD5000AAKB) to the new 1TB using Active Disk Image. Once I put the cloned 1TB drive back into PVR, it sees only the original 500GB. To be precise, in diagnostic mode on page 18 at the top it shows the correct model and size of the 1TB drive but the size of AVFS partition remains the same as it was for the 500GB drive (972434700). As a result, I don’t get any increase in the space available for new recordings.

I cloned both external and internal drives before with Active Disk Image: internal IDE 160GB to 500GB and external SATA 500GB to 1TB. Every time the PVR would automatically allocate the extra space to AVFS and expand the available capacity right away. The hardware is not an issue here because I can record and view programs with the new drive without any problems. In fact, I used this particular 1TB drive for over a year as an external HDD in a Vantec eSATA enclosure. After the infamous SARA upgrade this November-December discussed at length in a sticky on this forum, I lost all the content on the external HDD, so I decided to use this as an opportunity to upgrade the internal drive.

Can anyone share their experience with this type of cloning? If not with a SATA drive then perhaps with a Seagate 750GB IDE drive?

Thanks!

[Jake]

I can answer your general cloning questions here. First, yes I cloned from 160GB to 1TB without issue. I did not use Windows software. Instead I booted from a USB stick into Linux and ran a single DD command. It is pretty straight forward and you avoid all the issues Windows cloning software is throwing up. Look for Trinity Rescue Disk.

If you have the 1TB + adapter working then you are one of the few (like me). Also, many people would love to get their hands on that 750GB PATA drive. But like chicken teeth they are hard to find in Canada.

[hddi]

Thanks for your reply. I tried restarting the box a bunch of times, then re-formatting the new 1TB drive and cloning onto it again with the same result. PVR doesn’t want to see the additional space. I can’t blame the cloning software since it creates the exact replica of the old 500GB drive.

Just out of curiosity, how fast is DD? Active Disk Image takes about 1 hour per 30 GB for me, which is kind of slow.

It would be a real pity if in the new SARA upgrade they dropped the capability to expand the partition automatically. So far it's the only reason I can think of. Too bad I don’t have a couple of spare smaller drives to test whether it’s the case for other configurations (i.e. cloning eHDD and smaller IDE iHDD).

Looks like I wasted my money on the IDE2SAT25 adapter, especially unfortunate since apparently it’s one of the lucky ones that work.

[Jake]

160GB took about 2.5 hours. If it is really that slow then perhaps the settings are incorrect. Read the early threads on cloning. The Windows software is particular about the method (via USB etc). TRD always works.

[romulus]

hddi
re:how fast is dd?

-the following was a previous post of mine:


I recently cloned my 160 GB Seagate hdd to a 500 GB WD5000AAKB using
the Trinity boot CD and the dd command.

dd if=/dev/hda of=/dev/hdb bs=64k

hda (Seagate master) hdb (WD slave)

Using the "bs" parameter decreased the the time considerably (1.3 hrs.)
compared to Jake's experience (2.5 hrs. without the "bs" parameter)

[hddi]

Originally Posted by romulus

Using the "bs" parameter decreased the the time considerably (1.3 hrs.)
compared to Jake's experience (2.5 hrs. without the "bs" parameter)

Thanks, now I realize the "bs" parameter should increase the speed significantly. Without it I'm getting about the same speeds as Jake when cloning IDE-to-IDE/SATA I regardless of software. Will give it a shot next time, perhaps once the SARA upgrade situation settles down.

[Brett A CR]

Hey guys I ve had a wd10ears installed for a few months now, few problems here and there.. I decided to replace my ide to sata adapter from a cheapy generic to the startech ide2sat25. It took a few resets to get it to fire up but now its is saying "video recorder not ready" " your recording device is being checked. One moment please" Has anyone else had this? Ive only waited an hour and it hasnt changed. I hear the hdd running. I havent switced back to the other adapter yet either, i thought Id check with the experts first any solution ideas would be great
thanks

also my cheapy adapter had a power light that is always on does the startech have this aswell.... ?

thanks

[57]

Be aware that with the latest firmware changes, many bets are off. Drives, adaptors, etc that used to work, may not after the update. Read post 1 thoroughly. Not too many people running adaptors, but here's hoping someone gets back to you soon.

http://www.digitalhome.ca/forum/showthread.php?t=131572

[Brett A CR]

The update took about 4 reboots to get the pvr to work but it runs fine with my old adapter.. id say a unrecoverable error happens maybe once a month tops... but one reboot always fixes it. I swapped back to my old adpater and it runs fine, i guess ill use this one.. i was hoping the ide2sat25 would fully eliminate any hiccups! i spoke to starte3ch ther is no running light one it so I have no idea if id operates correctly or not, maybe ill return try a second one