| Sky+ & Sky HD Upgrade Guide |
| 1. Disclaimer |
| 2. Introduction |
| 3. What version of Sky+ Receiver do I have? |
| 4. What kind of Hard Disk should I upgrade my Sky+ receiver with? |
| 5. Hard Disk sizes |
| 6. Consumer Electronics Drives (CE) |
| 7. Installation of the Hard Disk |
| 8. Observations |
| 9. Problems & Bugs |
| 10. Links |
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| 1. Disclaimer |
Though upgrading a Sky+ receiver is a relately safe and easy procedure, the Astra 2D Website would like to make all readers aware of the following:
By following the information below, you will void the warranty of your Sky+ receiver.
The Astra 2D Website accepts no responsiblety for any damaged caused to your Sky+ box receiver. Upgrade at your own risk.
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| Upgrading your Sky+ receiver is not officially supported or approved by Sky Digital, Pace Micro, Amstrad or Thomson. You perform the upgrade entirely at you own risk and are responsible for any damage caused to yourself or your Sky+ receiver while following the upgrade procedure. |
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| 2. Introduction |
Sky+ receivers are incredibly user friendly, however, as many users have found, the main drawback to all but the most recent Sky+ 160 receivers is the standard 40GB hard disk size. This holds about 20 hours or so of TV and for many, this simply is not enough.
Although not recommended or endorsed by Sky Digital, it is posible to install a larger hard disk, and the following guide will try and show you how to upgrade V1, V2 and V3 types and list common problems you may encounter along the way. If you have any information to add or corrections, please mail the site so the guide can be improved and make the guide easier for others in the future.
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| For a pictural Guide to upgrading Sky+ click HERE. |
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| 3. What version of Sky+ Receiver do I have? |
V1 Pace Sky+ V1: Physically the largest of the Plus receivers available. Has the Interactive card slot in the middle, with the Led counter on the left. 40GB Hard Drive as standard.
V2 Pace Sky+ V2: Smaller than the Pace V1 Sky+ receiver. Has the Interactive card slot on the left with the Led counter in the middle. 40GB Hard Drive as standard.
Amstrad Sky+ V2: Equal in size as the Pace Sky+ V2 and looks virtually identical, apart from the Interactive card slot being on the right, and the control buttons on the left. 40GB Hard Drive as standard.
V3 Sky+ V3: Newest Sky+ receiver which has a 160GB Hard Disk as standard. However 80GB of whatever size drive you install in such a box is reserved by Sky, leaving the remainder (which also happens to be 80GB as supplied) for the user. 80GB doubles the recording capacity (from previous V1 and V2 receivers) to approximately 40 hours. No one except Sky knows how to “unlock” the reserved space, at present. Amstrad Sky+ V3: Card slot to lower right of centre |
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| Pace Sky+ V3: Card slot to lower left of centre |
| Thomson Sky+ 160: The newest box build by Thompson, immediately identifiable by the large 160 printed on the front. Comes with a 160GB Hard Disk as standard, and has USB ports (as yet unused). |
| Sky HD |
Sky HD: All Sky High Definition (HD) receivers will contain the Sky+ functionality as standard. Currently the only HD box in production is by Thomson and contains a 300GB hard drive, of which 140GB is permanently reserved by Sky leaving 160GB for user recordings. |
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| 4. What kind of Hard Disk should I upgrade my Sky+ receiver with? |
| The Pace V1 and V2 Sky+ receivers were installed with a 40GB Maxtor Hard Disk, spinning at 5400rpm. The majority of Pace upgraders have therefore used Maxtor Hard disks running at 5400rpm with capacities of 80GB, 120GB, and more recently 160GB and 250GB. |
| Amstrad V2 receivers on the other hand seem to come installed with a 40GB Samsung SpinPoint Hard Disk. Therefore owners of these boxes tend to chose to use Sansung SpinPoint drives, initially with a capacity of 160GB. More recently the Samsung 250GB V120CE model has been used with great success, even in Pace and Thomson receivers. |
| The best Hard Disks to go for run at 5400rpm, cache shouldn’t be a concern. The majority of successful upgrades have been carried out with primarily Maxtor or Samsung drives. 7200rpm drives are being used in newer receivers, these are now being used for upgrades. |
| It is important to mention, that not every make or model of Hard Disk works in a Sky+ receiver, this is probably due to timing differences and feature sets provided by the different drive manufacturers. Some drives will work well in some makes and models of Sky+ receivers, whilst giving unreliable recording in others. It is therefore highly recommended to obtain a drive that has been tried and tested for your particular make and model. |
| Upon the introduction of the V3 series of Sky+ receivers an area of the disk (currently 80GB) is reserved for use by BSkyB. It is not clear what this area is to be used for, it is likely to be used for video on demand (VOD) and other services. |
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| 5. Hard Disk sizes |
| Below is a table showing you how much recording space is left after a 250GB upgrade for each of the current Sky+ receivers: |
| Receiver Model |
Drive Size |
Usable Drive Space |
Reserved |
Pace 3000 (V1) |
250GB (approx 125 hours) |
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| Pace 3100 (V2) |
250GB (approx 125 hours) |
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| Pace TDS470N (V3) |
170GB (approx 85 hours) |
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| Amstrad DRX180 (V2) |
250GB (approx 125 hours) |
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| Amstrad DRX280 (V3) |
170GB (approx 85 hours) |
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| Thomson DSI6210 (Sky+ 160) |
250GB (approx 125 hours) |
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Sky HD |
500GB (approx ?) |
360GB |
140GB |
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| Drives over 300GB have been tested, however these do NOT work on any Sky+ receivers tested so far, unless their capacity is limited using the drive manufacturers tools to around 270GB. This seems to be a fundamental limit of the Full System Reset (FSR) function of Sky+ software. The way around this is to copy over all your recordings from a smaller drive using the Copy+ software and your PC. Use of Copy+ in this way has been tested by a very small number of users and shown to work for drives up to 500GB. However please remember that this workaround is still experimental, and if you ever need to do a FSR in the future the box will not be able to correctly reformat the drive. The only option will be to return the drive to your PC and use Copy+ once again. |
| Sky HD: The maximum size drive that has been tested appears to be 500GB, and this works correctly, even for a FSR. Please remember that 140GB of this space is still reserved by Sky, which will leave you with 360GB for your personal recordings. |
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| 6. Consumer Electronics Drives (CE) |
What is the difference between a regular desktop PC hard disk and a Consumer Electronics (CE) drive?
Consumer Electronics (CE) hard disks are specifically manufactured for the PVR (Personal Video Recorder) market. CE drives are not generally available in computer or electronics stores, and can only be purchased through authorised resellers. Consumer Electronics drives have a few key differences from normal desktop drives that make them far superior to desktop PC drives for PVR usage: |
Better streaming video performance - ensuring that you always get a great picture. CE drives are optimized for streaming to avoid the stutters and jerkiness that can be caused by repeated error checking that occurs on regular desktop PC drives. Hard disk drives designed for PC applications are optimized for data integrity through enhanced error detection and correction routines. These error correction 'features' on PC drives cause the data flow to be paused until an error is corrected, which causes jerky playback of video and audio.
Minimized operational noise - whisper quiet operation. CE drives use customized firmware algorithms referred to as the silentseek actuator profile. The silent-seek actuator profile slows the trajectory of the seek pattern, which results in quiet seek operations and lower power consumption. The CE drives supplied by XtendedPlay also use the quietest type of motor available: fourth-generation fluid dynamic bearing (FDB) technology. This results in whisper-quiet operating acoustics of 2.4 bels - at the threshold of human hearing.
Reduced power consumption - protecting your PVR. CE hard disks are specifically designed to reduce electrical power consumption. PVR's are particularly sensitive to the amount of power used by the hard disk. The power supply electronics in a PVR have often been designed to operate near their limit and the addition of a larger hard disk can put extra strain on the power supply. Installing a regular PC hard disk can cause the life of the PVR power supply to be dramatically reduced.
Reduced heat disipation - keeping it cool. CE drives are designed to reduce heat to a minimum. The enclosure of a PVR has been designed to deal with the amount of heat generated by the original hard disk drive. Larger capacity PC drives often create much more heat than the standard PVR drive and can cause reliability problems. |
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| 7. Installation of the Hard Drive |
| First of all decide if you want to use your PC to copy all your recordings across from your old drive. Note that this will also copy all your series links and reminders, so it is actually quite useful. Using your PC does increase the complexity of the upgrade process slightly, but the software has been designed to be as simple to use as possible. You can further simplify the process by using external USB drive caddies to save opening up your PC. Full instructions and the Copy+ software can be found at the official Copy+ web site. If you decide not to use the Copy+ software, remember that all programmes and Series Links will be lost. If you have bought a Maxtor drive, it is worth running the Maxtor utilities to turn off Write Verify and set the HD to Quiet mode. |
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| 1. Check the screws on your Sky+ unit, some makes use security screws (T10 Torx Security bit if you have a Pace box). If you need security bits these can be purchased from either ScrewFix Direct or Maplin (code GU60Q). |
| 2. Before you start, Press Services, Select SKY+ Setup and set "Instant Rewind" to "Off" and "Save New Settings". Put your Sky+ receiver in standby and disconnect the power cable. Unplug all other cables, remove the lid, it slides back (T10 Torx-Type Security Bit Required). |
3. Unscrew and remove the four screws in the rubber mounts either side of the hard drive. Lift up and carefully unplug the IDE and 4 Pin power cable from the hard drive. Remember to take all necessary precautions to prevent damage by static discharge.
4. The IDE cable of the Sky+ receivers is tight, take care when disconnecting, this will prevent any damage to the ribbon.
5. Slide out the four shock absorbent / ant vibration feet. You can now remove the two plates from the sides of your old drive (Philips screwdriver required) and mount them on your new drive.
6. Set the new drives jumper to make it "Cable Select" as per the drive you removed. Slide the four shock absorbent / anti vibration feet back into position and refit the drive in your box again taking care re the alignment of the four thermal transfer pads.
REMEMBER to use an anti static surface!
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| Once your receiver is fully assembled, power it up, wait two minutes and press the Sky Key. Perform A "Full System Reset" (Press Services,4,01 Select,8 Housekeeping), then wait for the receiver Box to Restart (normally 3mins for a 120Gb drive and 45mins for a 250Gb drive), again wait two minutes and press the Sky Key. |
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| Test for correct operation, re-enable "Instant Rewind" and re-enter your Series Links. |
| Click HERE, for a step by step picture guide to upgrading Sky+. |
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| 8. Observations |
| Due to the nature of the larger Hard Drive, the physical size of the drive is some what larger, however, it should still be small enough to fit nicely into your Sky+ receiver. |
| A lot of upgraders have noticed that the Fan in the upgraded Sky+ receiver stays on for a long time, if not all the time. It is the belief of many that this is due to the firmware. The fan on the Sky+ machines are quite robust and in most cases the fan noise is not noticeable. |
| The latest Sky+ firmware instructs the Hard Drive to wind down when not in use, so cooling is less of an issue as before. |
| It is worth keeping the old Sky+ Hard Drive safe and sound should you have any problems with your receiver in the future. Most Sky+ receivers do not have a warranty seal, so in theory you could put the original drive back in the machine should you have to replace the unit. |
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| 9. Problems & Bugs |
| The 17 minute Bug |
| The "17 minute bug" plagued many owners who upgraded their Sky+ machines (and unfortunately some users who didn’t) after the firmware containing the Dual Recording functionality was released. The bug froze any Sky+ recordings at the hour mark, effectively ruining any recording that ran beyond that duration. A major symptom of this bug was that the infected program always jumped back to the seventeen-minute mark if you used fast forward or rewind on your recording between 17 minutes and the time the recording froze. Additionally playback of the recording past 51 minutes was normally impossible. |
| Initially Sky released a fix for the "17 minute bug" to V2 boxes just prior to launch of the Sky+ 160 - However V1 boxes were still affected. Later it appears that Sky hare rolled this fix into later firmware updates and applied it to the V1 boxes also. No occurrence of the "17 minute bug" have been reported on the forums for quite some time now, and this bug is generally regarded as fixed for all makes and model of Sky+ boxes. |
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| 10. Sky+ Upgrade Links |
| Copy+ Website Copy+ is a powerful piece of FREEWARE software designed exclusively to copy the hard drives from Sky+/XTV set-top boxes. There is literally nothing else available that can do what Copy+ can. |
| Sky+ Amstrad DRX180 Hard Drive upgrade Jerome's Step by step guide to upgrading a Sky+ receiver. |
| Morlocks Web Site Upgrade Sky+ V2. |
| Sky+ Forum at Digital Spy |
