Upgrade Foxsat HDR to 1TB - which drive??

SorenLorensen · 02-08-2023 12:26pm #1

I'm perfectly happy with the Foxsat HDR box but now BBC 1 and 2 are HD only, I'm finding managing the 500GB memory is a bit tricky. I know (in theory!) it's possible to upgrade the hard drive to 1TB without any formatting but I can't find any recent threads anywhere recommending a particular drive.

Ideally, it'd just slot into place and not need something on pins 5 and 6, whatever that means. I'm not technical at all and only recently realised the front panel flips down!

All help appreciated!

dermo2014 · 02-08-2023 5:31pm

I upgraded mine years ago to a Western Digital WD 1TB Green drive, a WD green drive was recommended not sure by whom or what site. No problems with it, still running fine.

You will need to remove the old drive, install the new one and format it from the box menu. I'm can't remember if there was a jumper on the old drive, if so match the new to the old.

If you want to watch recordings on the old drive you will need to use a HD cradle and connect it externally through the USB port on the front of the box.

Vic_08 · 02-08-2023 10:19pm

Any full size drive will probably work.

I put a 2TB in mine years ago, cloned the original and resized the partition so it was an exact copy with all recordings just extra free space.

The box doesn't cope well with a large number of recordings though, at least on the original firmware. Recording and playback works fine but accessing the media list gets glacially slow.

Atlantic Dawn · 02-08-2023 10:44pm

I've put 2 seperate drives in to mine over the years as they eventually failed, probably not bad for 13/14 years of ownership. Installing the most recent one I had to change the jumper settings on the drive, I believe this was due to some SATA compatability issue but only took seconds to fix. This is the most recent drive I added...

https://www.amazon.co.uk/WD-TB-PC-Hard-Drive-dp-B0088PUEPK/dp/B0088PUEPK/

When you put the new drive in and power up the box it will automatically recognise the new drive and ask you do you want to format it. When formatting it you will have the option of how much you want to allocate to Music files, I would set this as low as possible unless you want to load lots of music on to it, I think by default it asks to allocate 25% which is crazy.

This is a good guide to the installation and setup process, videos are small which is annoying, 11parts....

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=STBZ3iR9jQQ

SorenLorensen · 03-08-2023 1:11pm

Thanks for the replies, I believe a 2TB drive needs formatting separately and is no good for lots of smaller recordings so I think the 1TB should be fine.

I think the green WD is no longer available so will go with the blue - I just wasn't sure how to find a drive that had the right SATA (whatever that is) but wasn't a PC one as that wouldn't work and the threads about upgrading seem to be from about 2011!!

SorenLorensen · 03-08-2023 1:14pm

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120932864#Comment_120932864

Would you mind explaining the SATA compatibility issue? Is this where you need to put something on pins 5 and 6? I've read about this but haven't a clue what it means!

Thanks for the videos, great to have something to watch, even if it's over 11 parts!!

Atlantic Dawn · 03-08-2023 1:26pm

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120934719#Comment_120934719

I believe it was that the device couldn't support the drive running at a certain speed and changing the jumper matched the speed of the original drive. I didn't have this problem on the first 1TB drive I connected. There was a clip that needs to be placed over some of the pins, I think it might have been 5 and 6.

This suggests it's 5 and 6

https://myhumax.org/forum/topic/hard-drive-jumper

In PC's you would usually use the jumper settings to define which hard drive is the master (drive the operating system runs on) and which is the slave (drive holding files). You add a clip which connects 2 pins together, these clips are available in computer shops or online, here's a link to some on Ebay...

https://www.ebay.ie/itm/392457856002?hash=item5b604fa402

Here's a video on what's involved in changing the jumper settings...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CWMEyI30LAs

SorenLorensen · 03-08-2023 1:31pm

Atlantic Dawn, thanks so much! I think that's answered all my questions. I'll get the drive and the pins and then I'll have no excuse not to have a go :D

Atlantic Dawn · 03-08-2023 1:50pm

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120934831#Comment_120934831

Yes you might not need to add the pins but if you don't have them and you need them it could take a few days to wait around for them in the post. If you have an old PC you are not using it's possible that one of the CD/DVD drives or the hard drives has the jumper clips in them that you could remove and use.

First one I did was literally just disconnect the old drive, connect new one, it was recognised, formatted and away I went.

SorenLorensen · 05-08-2023 2:03pm

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120934937#Comment_120934937

I'm not really an "old computer lying around" kind of person, only recently found the front panel on the Humax!!

Thanks for all the the help, you've reminded me that I haven't ordered yet so must get to it!

SorenLorensen · 20-08-2023 1:10pm

Got a rush of blood to the head and decided early this morning was the time to do the upgrade! All went very smoothly, even though I couldn't remove the connection to the fax so was working on a very short lead with that still in place. Thankfully, the drive went in without needing any pins as I wouldn't have known where to start with them, although I had them, just in case.

I've formatted the drive to leave only 1GB (lowest amount allowed) for music/photos and am currently trying to remember some of the scheduled recordings I'd set up.

Thanks for all the help!

SorenLorensen · 20-08-2023 2:29pm

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121003658#Comment_121003658

Connection to the FAN, that should be, not fax!!

SorenLorensen · 08-09-2023 11:40am

Updating this, for future reference for myself!

I started getting HDD not found, check HDD messages. Initially, they cleared if I did a hard restart but that stopped working yesterday and it meant that the box wasn't recording anything.

Yesterday, I put back in the old HDD which worked fine and made me realise how loud the new one was!

Today, I had a play with the jumpers on the pins on the new drive to see if that would make a difference. I put a pin initially in the same place as in the video above, didn't work. Then moved the pin two columns across to what I was hoping were pins 5 and 6 that I'd read somewhere might be an issue. The drive was fabulously quiet (silent, really) and still wasn't working.

I eventually realised that the best way to see what pins were required would be to look at the old drive! It has one row of four pins, the new drive has two rows so I put two jumpers to cover the top row completely and that seems to have done the trick. The Humax is less noisy than it was, I'm hoping because I've slowed it down by covering the pins.

On the plus side, I've no longer any fear about opening up the box 😁

SorenLorensen · 01-10-2023 9:50am

This is (hopefully!) my last update - the drive started to fail again using the settings above. I could only use the power button on the control as the one on the box wouldn't do a boot on start up which meant the drive wasn't recognised. When the same thing was happening with the remote control button, I knew I was looking for trouble!

After some extensive image searching, I found the pins layout for the drive and I realised that the pins 5 and 6 that I needed to put a jumper on to slow down the speed were not any of the pins I'd already tried. I found https://support-en.wd.com/app/answers/detailweb/a_id/1991#satadesktopjump which showed that showed where to add the jumper to slow the speed of the drive to 150mb/s (which is the speed the Humax wants).

So, I've done that and the machine seems to be happy! I can use either power switch to turn it on, if it's asleep it'll do a full boot which can be pretty show (dread to think how long it'd take with a 2tb drive!) but it's working fine other than that so I'm hoping that that is the last time I have to open that box!

Upgrade Foxsat HDR to 1TB - which drive??

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