[slyboy]

I picked up my new 8642 PVR tonight. Should have a chance to set it up on Sunday. I do plan on upgrading the hard drive immediately, warranty or not because as we all know, 160GB is simply not even close to being enough space for HD recordings, and all I record is HD. Will report back soon.

Edit by 57. Please note that certain drives may not work (as we have found in several other internal/external HDD threads). If you experiment with "unproven" drives, be prepared for disappointment.

People considering this upgrade should familiarize themselves with the iHDD thread for the 8300 first and realize that there are differences with this new PVR. For example, this PVR uses SATA drives, not PATA.

SA8000/8300HD - Internal Hard Disk Upgrade Works (Cloning too) See Post 1. - Canadian TV, Computing and Home Theatre Forums

As more information becomes available/pertinent, I'll try to add it here


Edit by 57: Does the PVR not report % space properly? Many people have reported the % space doesn't seem correct (internal and/or external), especially if there is not a lot of space used - 8642 User thread. Record at least 10 hours of HD and then see the percentages.

 

[lonetreejim]

Pictures with the 8642 cover removed

 

[lonetreejim]

I picked up my new 8642 PVR tonight. I do plan on upgrading the hard drive immediately...

Perhaps I can save you some time. I tried putting a 1.5 TB drive in but the firmware reported it as just 1TB (see the link below).

Not wanting to add another variable to the test I used a 1 TB drive instead.

Compare with this 1 TB drive...

 

[lonetreejim]

My reply to a private message from slyboy...

Which TB drive did you purchase and why?

The 160 GB drive it came with was a WD Blue (WD1600AAJS) which is a 7200 RPM drive. I used a WD Black 1TB drive model (WD1001FALS), also 7200 RPM, because I had one on hand and could use it to try out 1TB without costing me any money immediately.

If I had had to buy a drive I would have likely got the WD Caviar Green. I've had good luck with those generally and they are a bit quieter and run cooler. Since video playback is not very demanding on a 3 GB/s drive I'll probably go this route before I declare success.

The size I ultimately buy will be either 1TB (WD10EADS) if my test goes well, a 750GB (WD7500AADS) or 640MB (WD6400AADS) if I can go over 500 but can't do 1TB or my fallback.. 500MB (WD5000AADS) if the wheels come off completely (I'll be disappointed if I have to go back to 500MB).

Recording night & day on two channels has filled it to 50% (70 movies & dramas) so the next few days will see how close it can get to 1TB. My experience last time (with a SATA-IDE converter in a 8300) crashed not long from now (capacity wise).

 

[icemankent]

Awesome - Jim.

Let me know how it goes as you get up to and reach the 1TB limit of your drive - just to make sure that the new cisco box plays nice with it.

I am thinking of doing a similar upgrade - but will stick with a "black" model of drive, as from poking around online, it seems that the "green" ones have been receiving many negative reviews from those who purchased them.
It would appear that being "green" means too many compromises in performance for the sake of being quiet and cool.

 

[slyboy]

Recommendation AGAINST WD Green Drives

Just to add some comments to this thread that I shared with lonetreeJim earlier:

Yesterday I came to the conclusion that I would pick up the Western Digital Black WD1001FALS hard drive model for the 8642 upgrade. I've been reading up on the WD website and I think the best replacement for the Blue line (in larger capacity models) is the Black line. The Green SATA drives have had too many issues in the Digital Home External Hard Drive thread on this site. I did a search through that thread for "WD10EADS" to remind myself of what I had remembered readying previously, and I don't like what I found. Although the Green drives are my choice for many PC applications, I don't currently trust them in this PVR application... too many reports of problems for my liking, and there were different hardware revisions of that particular Green model quoted above, so you don't know what you're getting when you buy it (3 and 4 patter versions apparently were shipped with different results depending on which one you got).

I didn't want to purchase any drives smaller than 1TB, and I want to say how valuable it is that lonetreejim did the test with the 1.5TB drive showing that the 8642 box didn't properly report the size. Excellent test! I'd say that's pretty decisive results that this device will not register more than 1TB per drive. An external 1TB drive may still be able to be connected, something I may test later. Tomorrow I'll install a WD1001FALS drive in place of the internal 160GB Blue drive that came with the unit.

 

[JamesK]

Was there a "warranty seal" on the hard drive? I don't see one in the picture. When I replaced the drive in my 8300, I had to carefully separate the seal from the drive.

 

[lonetreejim]

Let me know how it goes as you get up to and reach the 1TB limit of your drive...

600 GB and all is well.

This is about the time that problems occurred in my experiments with the 8300. All of the sudden shows that were in listed as being recorded would not play, when I stopped them the time remaining would shows gibberish and then the unit spontaneously rebooted and reformatted the HDD.

I have my fingers crossed.

 

[lonetreejim]

Was there a "warranty seal" on the hard drive?..

There was but it was not the same as the one in the 8300. It just looked like a piece of tape (see photo link below). I don't know it will react to the oils on fingers but I do know that it had "sprung" off the drive caddy by the time I opened the case.

I just carefully put the drive, warranty seal and all, in an anti-static bag in case I need it later.

 

[slyboy]

I can tell you that the green tape on mine didn't react nicely to being removed. Seemed more tacky than the white/hologram sticker on the 8300HD hard drive. Mine has been removed completely as part of the green colouring came off the tape and was left behind on the drive and frame, needing to be scrubbed off afterwards. Perhaps Jim was just more careful than I was though and it is possible to remove it cleanly.

 

[lonetreejim]

Well, I've put more on this PVR than any HDD I put in my 8300 and everything is working perfectly. The WD Black is quiet and reasonably cool. No glitches to speak of (the odd audio dropout but no more than I'm used to).

I think I'm ready to declare victory... for now at least.

 

[Leavenowitness]

How long did your formatting take?

I just swapped out my 160GB drive for a 1TB WD Caviar black drive and the box has been showing the following "h***" the "*" is a rolling number that has been working its way up to 999 and then rolls over to 0 and counts up again.

Did you guys who HDD swapped have to wait 6+ hours for the unit to finish this cycle? As of now I can't even power the unit on.

Thanks

 

[lonetreejim]

Something's wrong.

If you have not done so already pull the plug, wait 30 seconds and try again. You should see the clock in about 4 minutes.

If it does the same thing for longer than a few minutes I'd put the 160 back in to see if it behaves itself with the stock drive.

 

[Leavenowitness]

Put in old drive...

Hi Jim,

I put the old drive back in and it is activating fine

The brand new WD black caviar is saying "ER62" then cycling again.

How do I bring up the diagnostic page so I can see the drive capacity being recognized?

Leavenowitness

 

[Leavenowitness]

The wrong Caviar Black....

I just swapped the 1TB caviar black drive into another 8642 and the same error (ER62) came up followed by an endless scrolling number as before.

I noticed the Caviar Black drive being used with success before was an HD-WD1001fals and the one I am trying is an HD-WD1002FAEX. It seems the difference is a 64mb cache instead of a 32mb cache.

I can't see how this is messing up the machine but I suppose I will keep trying.

Any advice would be appreciated as I would really like this to work

 

[lonetreejim]

...the Caviar Black drive being used with success ... was a WD1001FALS and the one I am trying is an HD-WD1002FAEX. It seems the difference is a 64mb cache instead of a 32mb cache.

The WD1600AAJS is 8MB cache.

I'm an old ReplayTV user and when we first started upgrading those we found the 16MB drives worked fine but the 32MB ones would not boot.

Obviously not an exact parallel but it wouldn't surprise me at all if the cache is the problem.

 

[Bplayer]

I noticed the Caviar Black drive being used with success before was an HD-WD1001fals and the one I am trying is an HD-WD1002FAEX. It seems the difference is a 64mb cache instead of a 32mb cache.

I can't see how this is messing up the machine but I suppose I will keep trying.

Any advice would be appreciated as I would really like this to work

The specs on the WD site state that the interface on the WD1001FALS is 3 Gb/s and the WD1002FALS is 6 Gb/s. This difference would likely be the cause of the problem rather than the larger buffer. There does not seem to be any options or utilities to downgrade the drive.

 

[Leavenowitness]

Must have cable connected!!

After a long frustrating day of trying to make my Caviar Black 1 TB drive come to life at my work ( hooked up to a tv but no cable feed ) I decided to try it at home before completely giving up just in case the box was needing a new firmware update to be flashed from the cable provider to recognize the drive.

BINGO

After hooking the box to my cable feed and connecting the new HDD, we have success. It formatted the drive in a few minutes and the time popped up fairly quickly.

A quick search through the firmware shows I now have 999GB of space available.

I love success!!!

- Thanks for all your help Jim, I wish I'd thought to ask about it being hooked to the cable line in advance but I couldn't fathom the relevance.

LeaveNoWitness

 

[lonetreejim]

After ... trying to make my Caviar Black 1 TB drive ... work ... BINGO

Glad to hear it worked out.

Just so we're clear, your WD Black is the WD1002FAEX. Correct?

 

[Leavenowitness]

WD HD-WD1002FAEX - 1TB 64Mb cache 7200rpm 6GB/s SATA III

You are bang on Jim,

For the record I haven't tried recording yet as I didn't feel like calling rogers at 11pm lastnight to activate the box but at least you can actually see the HDD being properly recognized in the firmware now.

It's funny,

My local PC shop doesn't carry the 1001FALS anymore. only the 1002FAEX.

I will post back again when I have filled the drive successfully

Leavenowitness