Pace Sky V2 hard drive upgrade
First thoughts
As a Christmas (2004) present to myself, I decided to upgrade the disk in my Sky Plus V2 (Pace) box.
Thanks to some information on Digital Spy and this Installation Guide by Automan it was easy to swap the hard drive.
At this time the Sky Plus 160 was due for release but at nearly £400 upgrading the disk in my current Sky Reciever would work out considerably cheaper, as well as giving me more disk space. (Cost of disk was approx £110)
After reading all the info I opted for the largest 250gb drive (Maxtor 5A250J0). Originally I attempted to order one from Dabs, but the order was delayed several times so I cancelled and went elsewhere.
There are people now selling 'upgrade kits' on the net and on ebay. There really is no need to buy one of these, particularly as they often work out more expensive than buying the components seperately.
All that is needed is a Torx-10 security screwdriver and the new hard disk. The Torx-10 security screwdriver differs from a typical Torx as it has a hole in the centre of the pointy-end, this fits over the peg in the centre of the Torx screws.
If, like me, you are unable to find one of these the screws can be removed using a pair of grips, but it is fiddly.
In my experience I found that the disk intialised after 5 minutes rather than the half hour or so that was mentioned in the write ups. A film now only takes up 1% of disk rather than 3, and a typical 30 minute program is is <1%, although this is rounded up to 1% as the Sky planner cannot show smaller values. I've been away on hols and come back to only 9% free, the problem now is when am I going to watch it all!!
The latest - a problem!
There aren't many people that have been running with the larger disk fo this amount of time (18 months)...and I'm starting to get problems I recently had a brown-out and since then I have had trouble with the 250gb disk - whether this is coincidence or not I do not know. What I have experienced is around 30% free, the disk makes loud clonking/ticking noises and the Pace box goes into standby mode. It would appear that a sector of the disk has been damaged. After attempting a planner rebuild I lost all of my recordings! With the disk now empty the Sky box worked as normal, until I reached the 30% free mark again. As before the box went into standby mode and it took several attempts before it would stay on long enough for me to access the planner, this time I deleted some recordings and got the disk up to 40% free and the box seemed OK. My plan is to fit a new 250gb disk, unfortunately the Maxtor 5A250J0 is no longer available, the new preferred disk is a Samsung SpinPoint V120CE (HA250JC).
New Spinpoint
I have been running with the SpinPoint disk for over 8 months and all is well (touch wood). The disk is a little noisier than the Samsung (sounds more sratchy) but other than that no problems.
Users on Digital Spy discovered that it is possible to use a larger hard drive in the V2 box, if the Copy+ program is used. In addition >750gb can be installed in the Sky HD receiver.
