Sky+ HD not turning off

I have a V2 Sky + box with a 120 gb HD in, it's not powering the HD down as my old one did, any thoughts?

Nige

--�
Subaru WRX (Annabel)

Landrover 110 County Station Wagon (Tyson)

'"Say hello to my little friend"

Nige wrote:

I have a V2 Sky + box with a 120 gb HD in, it's not powering the HD
down as my old one did, any thoughts?

Lots of folks have mentioned this with upgraded drives. It seems to
depend on the model of HD used and the model of the Sky box. I know I'd
fit extra cooling if it were me. The Pace boxes can get stupidly hot
due to their inefficient cooling design and a permanently running drive
will only make it worse.

Regards

Mark

"Mark A" wrote in message
...
Nige wrote:

I have a V2 Sky + box with a 120 gb HD in, it's not powering the HD
down as my old one did, any thoughts?

Lots of folks have mentioned this with upgraded drives. It seems to
depend on the model of HD used and the model of the Sky box. I know I'd
fit extra cooling if it were me. The Pace boxes can get stupidly hot
due to their inefficient cooling design and a permanently running drive
will only make it worse.

But turning the drive on & off all the time will seriously reduce a disk's
life-span! So I'd be glad yours doesn't turn off if I were you. I leave
my box on all the time because of that fact.

Alan Truelove Jr. wrote:

But turning the drive on & off all the time will seriously reduce a
disk's life-span!

Unproven. Yes, I've heard all the stories about servers that ran for
six centuries and the moment they were turned off the world ended, blah,
blah, blah. Obviously Pace and other makers of PVRs disagree and turn
their drives off when not in use. Either way, short of rewiring the box
that decision is out of our hands.

So I'd be glad yours doesn't turn off if I were you. I leave
my box on all the time because of that fact.

What about dual recording? Leave your box on and it has to make a choice
of which channel to ditch as it can't watch all three.

Whatever the case for or against drives switching off or not, the fact
remains that left on they'll cook themselves into an early grave, often
as short as six months. Extra cooling will prolong the life of the drive
and make the whole system much more reliable. Since I fitted my extra
fans over a year ago I have not had one fault, not one failed recording.
Prior to that I lost two hard drives in a year. Losing the drives was
bad enough, but the pain of losing all the recordings was much worse.
When I checked the drives they were literally too hot to touch.

Leave it on, leave it off, I could care less. But whatever you do, if
you want to prolong to life of the drive, and make the system a lot more
bullet proof, then fit extra cooling. If done right it's silent in
operation and it keeps the drive cool, as well as the PSU and main
board.

Regards

Mark

Whatever the case for or against drives switching off or not, the fact
remains that left on they'll cook themselves into an early grave, often
as short as six months. Extra cooling will prolong the life of the drive
and make the whole system much more reliable. Since I fitted my extra
fans over a year ago I have not had one fault, not one failed recording.
Prior to that I lost two hard drives in a year. Losing the drives was
bad enough, but the pain of losing all the recordings was much worse.
When I checked the drives they were literally too hot to touch.

Leave it on, leave it off, I could care less. But whatever you do, if
you want to prolong to life of the drive, and make the system a lot more
bullet proof, then fit extra cooling. If done right it's silent in
operation and it keeps the drive cool, as well as the PSU and main
board.

Regards

Mark

I know it's a little off topic, but what have you added to cool your Sky
plus down?

Nigel.

Nigel wrote:

I know it's a little off topic, but what have you added to cool your
Sky plus down?

I took the existing fan out and left it in the bottom of the box. Then I
got two 40mm 12v PC fans. I fitted one in the same place that the old
one came out of. The other I fitted to the hole left by removing the
expansion panel that's never been used for anything. I mounted it on the
outside using double-sided sticky pads cut up into quarters. Next I
ganged them both up to a variable voltage external power supply. I set
it down to 7.5v and both fans run whisper quiet - one blowing in, one
sucking out.

'Course, after I'd done all that I discovered a more elegant way would
be to get a modified power cable that feeds the hard drive but with an
extra 12v fly out lead for feeding the fan. Instead of the fan you
connect it up to a Zalman fan speed controller and then feed that to
your fan(s), set to whatever speed to deem quiet enough but still
cooling sufficiently.

I know lots of folks say their Sky box runs cool, but they're judging
this by touching the outer case. What you need to do it take the cover
off, and the aluminium shroud covering the drive itself, then touch the
drive. If my experience of three different drives is anything to go by
you won't be able to touch it for long. It'll feel about the same as
touching a radiator on full. Not good, not good at all.

Now I leave the shroud off and check the drive every now and again. At
first it was two or three times a day, so paranoid was I. But now I've
managed to cut down to once a month. With the extra cooling it's never
more that warm, which is just how I want it.

Regards

Mark