Sky HD receiver Hard Disk Upgrade

First thoughts


Sky HD receiver

Something which has puzzled me about the HD receiver, is the small amount of 'personal storage', if you have Sky HD you are going to want to record programmes in High Definition, considering that an hours programme is 5-6% then 160gb isn't going to go very far!

There are various options with the HD receiver, including an external SATA drive (avoids removing the warranty void sticker), or if you prefer a tidier setup, an internal 750gb hard drive. Other alternatives are a Western Digital WD5000AAKS (500Gb) which is popular, or WD10EVCS.

Don't forget that you can use Sky Copy Plus to copy your recordings to your new drive, and to format the new drive correctly if it's over 500gb.

Sky have been a bit more canny with the HD receiver, obviously realising that a lot of owners upgraded the disc in their Sky plus box, and have a placed a "warranty void" sticker over one of the screw holes for the hard drive mount.

As with any modification it's all done at your own risk.

A full write-up of the disc upgrade can be found here - http://www.morlocks.co.uk/disc-change-hd.htm


Sky Hi Def, upgraded to 1tb

Posted on November 2009

We have had our Sky HD receiver for 2 years and in that time have had to curtail our HD recording for the above reason. However I have now got around to installing a 1tb hard drive.
There are a few different drives mentioned on the internet as being suitable. For my Thompson box I select a Western Digital WD10EVVS, this particular drive is designed with AV systems in mind.
The installation was straightforward, if you are not familiar with dismantling your HD receiver, have a look at Morlocks website. Using Sky Copy Plus I was able to transfer my recordings from the old HDD to the new one. Sky Copy Plus will format the new 1tb drive correctly - the Sky software will not recognise a disk larger than 750gb by itself - you will also retain the 140gb Anytime partition.

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