Upgrading Sky+ box

rmg1

Hi all

We've just had a letter from Sky to say the Sky+ box is longer covered by warranty as we've passed the 12-month mark.
If it goes bang, will Sky still repair/replace it?
As the box is now "ours" (according to sky), is it possible to swap out the HDD in it for something bigger?
If so, does anyone know what type they are (I'm assuming SATA 1/2?) and is it an easy job?

penrhyn

The box has always been yours.
If it goes off, bang, then Sky will replace it for a consideration, used to be £65 for the service call. Or you can try the old, I'll cancel routine!

Many people have fitted a larger hard drive, the folks at https://www.skyuser.co.uk , have tutorials, this one for the Samsung Sky+HD box.

http://www.skyuser.co.uk/tutorials/samsung_hd_box_how_to_change_the_hdd.html

rmg1

That looks easy enough to do.
Can I clone the original onto the new to make sure we don't lose anything currently on there and to make sure the formatting's correct?

I've done this with drives with Windows on without issues but don't know if Sky use something peculiar.

[Deleted User]

Really, if it breaks, you phone Sky, threaten to leave and they'll send you a shiney Sky HD box. I also got them to throw in £100 of credit if i took the HD package. (that i'll be cancelling after a year)

You should check this page out for software to use while cloning the drive - http://www.skycopyplus.co.uk/

rmg1

I would have thought I could use my normal cloning software (Acronis) to do the job.

macman

Even if it does fail, they are cheap as chips on eBay, or free on freegle. (standard, not the HD ones).
A Sky replacement will cost you £65 and will only be a refurb anyway.
Do not waste your money on Sky insurance!

rmg1

We aren't doing.
We're just running out of room on the current one (kid's cartoons are taking up far too much room).
We're happy with the box as-is, could just use a bit more room on it.

rmg1

On a slightly different note, does it make a difference if I buy a SATA 1/2/3 HDD as a replacement?
Is there any way of telling what's currently in there (preferably without taking it apart)?

almillar

rmg1 - DON'T use Acronis to clone it. DON'T even plug it into your PC until you have reseached this on the above websites, you could lose your recordings as the Sky hard drive is in a format that Windows doesn't understand - they'll be much more useful than here. Make sure you know which version of box you have, and check out what other people have used.
And the fuller the disk is, the longer it'll take to copy - get as much watched and deleted as you can!

Yorksboy

I upgraded my Sky+HD box with a 1.5TB HDD. Very simple to do. 250GB is reserved for Anytime (you can't change this), so 1.25TB for your own recordings - this is 5 times what was on the original box.However, you really do need to read all the instructions etc for copy+. And not that due to Sky upgrading the firmware on the boxes it is not possible to copy your existing recordings over to the new disk any more. If you really do want to keep any yoou can copy them to DVD/VHS using the Sky box itself (instructions are in the manual).

almillar

All SkyHD boxes should have been upgraded to 'Darwin' by now (started Feb 2011 I think) which is the firmware mentioned above. It introduced the TV picture inside the guide I think, mine already had it when I got it.
Anyway, Copy+ can't currently copy Darwin drives, but EXPVR can. I used it a while back to upgrade from 500gb to 1TB, and I just used it again to go from 1TB to 2TB (from Maplin, who unbelievably have a good offer on ATM!). I had 14% free and it went to 64% on the new disk! I had 570GB worth of stuff on my drive, which took 10 hours to copy, I highly recommend connecting both drives via SATA or eSATA which will be significantly faster than USB.