| Sky+ Hard Drive Upgrade |
| 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.
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.
Most Sky+ receivers do not have a warranty seal.
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| Sky+ Models |
Pace Sky+ V1 (9F20nn): Physically the largest of the Plus boxes available, it has the Interactive card slot in the middle, with the Led counter on the left. 40GB Hard Drive as standard. Note: Check that the receiver has EPG version 4.20a (or later) before upgrading.
Pace Sky+ V2 (9F21nn): Smaller than the Pace V1 Sky+ receiver it has the Interactive card slot on the left with the Led counter in the middle. 40GB Hard Drive as standard.
Pace Sky+ V2 (9F23nn): Same as the 9F21nn model, it has been refurbished by Sky with an upgraded 160GB Hard Drive.
Amstrad Sky+ (4F20nn): 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.Thomson Sky+ 160 (4E20nn): The first receiver 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.
Sky+ V3: Newest Sky+ box which has a 160GB Hard Disk as standard. However 80GB of whatever size drive you install in such a box is reserved by Sky for the Anytime TV service, leaving the remainder (which also happens to be 80GB as supplied) for the user. No one except Sky knows how to “unlock” the reserved space. |
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| V3 boxes are made by 3 different manufacturers: |
| Pace Sky+ V3 (9F22nn): Card slot to lower left of centre |
| Amstrad Sky+ V3 (4F21nn): Card slot to lower right of centre |
| Thomson Sky+ V3 (4E21nn): Card slot at bottom slightly to left of centre |
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| What kind of Hard Drive should be used with Sky+? |
| 7200rpm drives have become the standard, so Sky have adjusted their firmware to cope with these faster spinning (and so slower to spin up) drives. Today spin speed should not be an issue, however it is usually considered best to pick a drive that is specified for Consumer Electronics (CE) or Audio/Visual (AV) use as these will have been tuned by the drive manufacturer for the demanding environment of PVR use. For example low power consumption, heat output and noise levels. |
| Not every make or model of HDD works in a Sky+ receiver, probably due to timing differences and feature sets provided by the different drive manufacturers. Some drives will work well in some makes/models of Sky+ receiver, 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 of box. That’s not to say that an untested drive will definitely not work, just that you will be taking a chance by ordering one and just expecting it to work flawlessly. |
| Receiver |
Original Drive Size & Available Recording Time |
160GB Drive Installed - Useable Space |
250GB Drive Installed - Useable Space |
500GB Drive Installed - Useable Space |
Pace 3100 (PVR2) |
40GB (20hrs) |
160GB (80hrs) |
250GB (125hrs) |
500GB (250hrs) |
Amstrad DRX180 (PVR2) |
40GB (20hrs) |
160GB (80hrs) |
250GB (125hrs) |
500GB (250hrs) |
Thomson DSI6210 (Sky+ 160) |
160GB (80hrs) |
160GB (80hrs) |
250GB (125hrs) |
500GB (250hrs) |
Pace TDS470N (PVR3) - 80GB reserved for Anytime |
160GB (40hrs) |
80GB (40hrs) |
170GB (85hrs) |
420GB (210hrs) |
Amstrad DRX280 (PVR3) - 80GB reserved for Anytime |
160GB (40hrs) |
80GB (40hrs) |
170GB (85hrs) |
420GB (210hrs) |
Thomson DSI8210CS (PVR3) - 80GB reserved for Anytime |
160GB (40hrs) |
80GB (40hrs) |
170GB (85hrs) |
420GB (210hrs) |
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| 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. |
| Pace |
The Pace V1 and V2 Sky+ units were installed with a 40GB Maxtor Hard Drive, spinning at 5400rpm. The majority of early Pace upgraders have therefore used Maxtor HDDs running at 5400rpm with capacities of 80GB, 120GB, 160GB and 250GB.
There are some unconfirmed reports that "older" V1 receivers can only take up to 120GB. Also a bug introduced in EPG firmware 4.10c temporarily meant that this box could not be upgraded. This was corrected with EPG 4.20a. Please check you have EPG 4.20a (or later) before upgrading. |
| Amstrad |
| Amstrad V2 boxes on the other hand seem to come installed with a 40GB Samsung SpinPoint Hard Disk. Therefore owners of these boxes tended to choose to use Sansung SpinPoint drives, initially with a capacity of 160GB. Later the 250GB V120CE model has was used with great success, even in Pace and Thomson boxes. |
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| Hard Drive size |
The largest drive that can be installed and formatted natively by any Sky+ receiver is 500GB. Above 500GB the receiver firmware only formats the hard drive to a lower capacity. The capacity achieved is the remainder after dividing by 508GB. Hence a 640GB drive gives only 142GB formatted capacity, a 750GB only 242GB, and a 1TB only 492GB etc.
It is possible to overcome the 508GB barrier by using Copy+. This software can correctly format the drive to use any capacity up to 1TB. However note that there appears to be a separate bug with the Sky firmware that does not permit drives over 1TB to work.
Note, if a Full System Reset is carried out using the receiver after formatting using Copy+, the drive will be reset to its lower formatted size. |
Sky+ receivers use PATA drives, which are attached by a 40 or 80 wire ribbon cable. The maximum sized PATA drives available are 750GB models, and so this acts as a practical limit for upgrading Sky+.
Remember that if you have a receiver that is capable of Sky Anytime, that 80GB of the total disk capacity will be reserved for this service. There is no way round this. |
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| Preparing the Hard Drive for Sky+ |
If you want to copy all your recordings across from your old drive, use Copy+. Copy+ will also copy all your series links and reminders over.Full instructions and the Copy+ software can be found at the official Copy+ web site.
If you are going to upgrade with a Maxtor hard drive, it is worth running the Maxtor utilities to turn off Write Verify and set the HDD to Quiet mode.
An alternative is to use Pingu’s CD image..
The Hitachi Feature Tool is able to set the industry standard Automatic Acoustic Management (quiet mode) on most drives, regardless of manufacturer. |
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| Installation of the Hard Drive |
| REMEMBER TO USE AN ANTI STATIC SURFACE. |
| Click HERE, for a step by step picture guide to upgrading Sky+. |
| 1. 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). |
| 2. Check the screws on your Sky+ unit, as some makes use security screws (T10 Torx Security bit with Pace models). |
| 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.
7. 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. Test for correct operation, re-enable "Instant Rewind" and re-enter your Series Links.
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Courtesy of Jerome |
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Courtesy of Jerome |
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| Observations |
The physical size of the new hard drive may be slightly larger, it should still be small enough to fit into the Sky+ receiver.
The IDE cable of the Sky+ machines is tight, be gentle when disconnecting.
A lot of upgraders have noticed that the Fan in the upgraded Sky+ receivers stays on for a long 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 isn’t noticeable.
The latest Sky+ firmware instructs the HDD to wind down when not in use, so cooling is less of an issue as before. Most Sky+ receivers do not have a warranty seal. |
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| 17 Minute Bug |
| The "17 minute bug" plagued many owners who upgraded their Sky+ receivers, the firmware contained Dual Recording functionality. 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 programme 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 many years, and this bug is regarded as fixed for all makes and model of Sky+ boxes. |
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| Sky+ 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. |
| Morlocks Web Site Upgrade Sky+ V2. |
| Sky+ Amstrad DRX180 Hard Drive upgrade Jerome's Step by step guide to upgrading a Sky+ receiver. |
| Sky+ Forum at Digital Spy |
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