Over recent months i have been suffering a small dilemma, Lots of NEW TV series starting and not enough SKY+ time to keep up.
24, Stargate SG1, Stargate Atlantis, Lost, CSI LV, CSI NY, Invasion, Threshold, Battlestar Gallactica to name a few. So I set about looking at upgrade the SKY+ box from the paltry 20 hours to something a bit more useful. Remembering the Google is my friend, I found lots of places selling kits and lots of forums discussing the matter.
As you would expect it is not a simple mater of out with the old and in with the new, different boxes have different hardware features, and different firmware will support different max disk sizes.
According to most places my V1 Pace box would only take a 160G disk but the V2 would take a 250G but not a 300G, then the disk must spin up and be fully ready in under 8 seconds (apparently). There was also lost of chatter about Maxtor disks being the most suitable.?
HMMMMMMMMMmmmmmmmm, I have a 300G Maxtor in a USB2 chassis is built, got to be worth a try, not outlay, so no loss???..
MORE research required.
Bingo, another forum, says use maxblast software from Maxtor to tweak the LBA value of the HD, and even suggested 274G was the MAX a SKY+ would support, got to be worth a shot.
Add ??3.99 for a set of security TORX driver from maplin, and Bob???s your aunty???s lover. One HD reporting to be 274G (250G in Real Computer Gigibaytes) installed in my SKY+ box,
Now for a Full RESET,
Services, 4,01,select, Full reset, select, confirm, and get a coffee as it is suppose to take 45 minutes on disk this big!!!
5 minutes later the BOX rebooted, my heart sank ???..
Wait for it to start up and check the menu,
SKY+ menu said 100% free, so it seems to be OK
Lets try and record some stuff, So I set it to record two programs at the same time (3 hours worth in total) and went out
Now it is crunch time,
First has it recorded both programs ??? ? ? YES !!!!
Second how much space did it use??? ? ? ? ? 2%.
YEEEE HAA, I have a working 137Hr Sky plus box
