As the heading says I am wanting to upgrade my Sky HD box to 1Tb drive and would like to know if anyone has done this and which drive they used

Sinclair

I did my sky+ box and used a western digital. There's a good app I think it's called sky copy +, but took a few hours to copy over from the old 120gb drive. The HD boxes should all be SATA.

It's a pretty easy process to do.

I used a Samsung drive when I upgraded mine which is a long time ago now. However, as the box was an early Thomson, Sky sent me a letter recently as they are keen to get all the Thomson boxes out of circulation. I was offered a replacement HD box for free, including installation OR one of the official new sky 1TB boxes for less than the price of purchasing a 1.5TB HDD. The official Sky 1TB box has a 1.5TB HDD, with 1TB usable for plus functionality and 500GB is used for anytime and the new anytime +.

Today they replaced my very old Thomson with a shiny new 1TB (1.5TB in reality) box, its much smaller than the earlier boxes and also much faster. I now also have anytime+ which is true VOD and it seems really good (must have sky broadband though).

Give sky customer services a call, especially if your box is an early Thomson as you will be offered a good deal and it will most likely cost less to get the official box than the cost to upgrade the HDD in your current one.

I used a Samsung drive when I upgraded mine which is a long time ago now. However, as the box was an early Thomson, Sky sent me a letter recently as they are keen to get all the Thomson boxes out of circulation. I was offered a replacement HD box for free, including installation OR one of the official new sky 1TB boxes for less than the price of purchasing a 1.5TB HDD. The official Sky 1TB box has a 1.5TB HDD, with 1TB usable for plus functionality and 500GB is used for anytime and the new anytime +.

Today they replaced my very old Thomson with a shiny new 1TB (1.5TB in reality) box, its much smaller than the earlier boxes and also much faster. I now also have anytime+ which is true VOD and it seems really good (must have sky broadband though).

Give sky customer services a call, especially if your box is an early Thomson as you will be offered a good deal and it will most likely cost less to get the official box than the cost to upgrade the HDD in your current one.

Did they copy over your saved programs?

Nope, but I whipped the HDD out of the old one and put the original back, all I need do is copy the contents using sky copy+ when I get some spare time.

Nope, but I whipped the HDD out of the old one and put the original back, all I need do is copy the contents using sky copy+ when I get some spare time.

You dont happen to know if you can use the app to copy between the older Sky+ and HD boxes do you?

I have so much unwatched stuff, it's one thing putting me off a HD upgrade. The extra £10/month being the other.

not sure, but I believe you can. Basically the software just copies the programs off the original HDD, so you can copy them onto the new one. Since the recorded programme is just a data stream from the broadcast it would be the same wether its on the standard + or HD box.

from the copy+ author

Copy+ has many uses, including:

• Upgrading to a larger hard drive
• Upgrading from Sky+ to Sky HD
• Making copies if your Sky box is being replaced
• Replacing a failing hard drive
• Correcting errors on the drive*
• Making backup copy of your hard drive*
• Defragmenting the drive*

Thanks guys> I had a western digital 1Tb drive in the box and I started getting lots of errors, "jumpy" and missed recordings so i put the original disc back in, but, it is really small and I need to get a larger drive in, in time for the open golf this weekend. Can you remember the model of the Samsung drive?

Sinclair

Thanks guys> I had a western digital 1Tb drive in the box and I started getting lots of errors, "jumpy" and missed recordings so i put the original disc back in, but, it is really small and I need to get a larger drive in, in time for the open golf this weekend. Can you remember the model of the Samsung drive?

Sinclair

I've got it here, although I guess its been obsolete for sometime, its a HD103UJ (1000GB, 7200RPM)

I've got it here, although I guess its been obsolete for sometime, its a HD103UJ (1000GB, 7200RPM)

Thanks Mannyo I am away with work for the next couple of days so will try to get on on t'internet i will try and recover the old disc with copy+ I didn't realise it would correct errors

Sinclair

Depends what the PSU rating is on your sky+ box, how much cooling the box has and what's in there.

I'd probably look at a WD greenpower AV 3.5" drive or a hitachi travelstar 2.5" 1TB drive if it was me.

Nope, but I whipped the HDD out of the old one and put the original back, all I need do is copy the contents using sky copy+ when I get some spare time.

I did the copy this evening, whipped apart my brand new 1TB box, and hooked up the drive to the PC without even removing it from the HD box. Copied about 500GB of data across, put it all back together and now have all my old recordings going back to 2007 on my new box. After powering up the 1TB box it took a few minutes to convert the disk to the new Darwin format, but once complete everything is available just as it was on my old box. I did have to break the warranty seal to do the copy, but now its back together you have to look really close to see the hairline break caused by the stanley knife.

It took just over 1hr to copy the data over with the drives directly connected to the motherboard via SATA cables. Using USB would have taken considerably longer.

Depends what the PSU rating is on your sky+ box, how much cooling the box has and what's in there.

I'd probably look at a WD greenpower AV 3.5" drive or a hitachi travelstar 2.5" 1TB drive if it was me.

The clunky old Samsung was fitted to my aged thomson box for some considerable time with no ill effects. I don't know how good the PSU is in the later boxes though.