Adding memory to Sky+

Norman wrote:
"Ed" wrote in message
oups.com...
The wife and kids series link so much crap that we always have less
than 20% free on the planner, so rather than put a keep mark against
any of my stuff, i thought I'd swap out the hard drive for a 160gb one.

Is this a simple process, and apart from invalidating the warranty, are
there any issues? Is it going to affect the performance of the
software?

And who will sell me the cheapest/best?

Cheers
Ed



The process is very easy, if I can do it then anyone can!! All the info you
need is here -
http://www.digitalspy.co.uk/forums/s...d.php?t=156344


One thing to note is that you may find the fan is on all the time if you
upgrade, certainly on my Pace PVR2 box. It was annoying to begin with but we
are used to it now.

regards
Norman

Thanks Norman

I can't believe there has been inflation in the memory market. What
about Moore's law? The article says 250 gb maxtor should be £65, I
can't find one cheaper than £85

Ed wrote:

Norman wrote:
"Ed" wrote in message
oups.com...
The wife and kids series link so much crap that we always have less
than 20% free on the planner, so rather than put a keep mark against
any of my stuff, i thought I'd swap out the hard drive for a 160gb one.

Is this a simple process, and apart from invalidating the warranty, are
there any issues? Is it going to affect the performance of the
software?

And who will sell me the cheapest/best?

Cheers
Ed



The process is very easy, if I can do it then anyone can!! All the info you
need is here -
http://www.digitalspy.co.uk/forums/s...d.php?t=156344


One thing to note is that you may find the fan is on all the time if you
upgrade, certainly on my Pace PVR2 box. It was annoying to begin with but we
are used to it now.

regards
Norman

Thanks Norman

I can't believe there has been inflation in the memory market. What
about Moore's law? The article says 250 gb maxtor should be £65, I
can't find one cheaper than £85

You're looking in the wrong place then .

http://www.ebuyer.com/UK/product/120289

Doc

Ed wrote:

Thanks Norman

I can't believe there has been inflation in the memory market. What
about Moore's law? The article says 250 gb maxtor should be £65, I
can't find one cheaper than £85


I think you're talking about the hard disk market, not the memory market.

In article . com, Ed
writes

Norman wrote:
"Ed" wrote in message
oups.com...
The wife and kids series link so much crap that we always have less
than 20% free on the planner, so rather than put a keep mark against
any of my stuff, i thought I'd swap out the hard drive for a 160gb one.

Is this a simple process, and apart from invalidating the warranty, are
there any issues? Is it going to affect the performance of the
software?

And who will sell me the cheapest/best?

Cheers
Ed



The process is very easy, if I can do it then anyone can!! All the info you
need is here -
http://www.digitalspy.co.uk/forums/s...d.php?t=156344


One thing to note is that you may find the fan is on all the time if you
upgrade, certainly on my Pace PVR2 box. It was annoying to begin with but we
are used to it now.

regards
Norman

Thanks Norman

I can't believe there has been inflation in the memory market. What
about Moore's law? The article says 250 gb maxtor should be £65, I
can't find one cheaper than £85


You wouldn't want a Maxtor, changed no end of those bl**dy things for
Seagate's which give no bother




£51-83 inc. VAT

http://www.ebuyer.com/UK/product/102936
--
Tony Sayer

You're looking in the wrong place then .

http://www.ebuyer.com/UK/product/120289

Doc

Don't buy that particular one, its got no lid!
--

Graham.
%Profound_observation%

tony sayer wrote:
You wouldn't want a Maxtor, changed no end of those bl**dy things for
Seagate's which give no bother

Same company, of course... Not had any problem with any of my Maxtors. Was
it a specific model you had trouble with? What were the nature of the
failures?

In article , Pyriform
writes
tony sayer wrote:
You wouldn't want a Maxtor, changed no end of those bl**dy things for
Seagate's which give no bother

Same company, of course... Not had any problem with any of my Maxtors. Was
it a specific model you had trouble with? What were the nature of the
failures?



The 40 and 80 GB drives mainly bad sectors and complete disk failure.
Perhaps they had a bad batch, perhaps I was unlucky having bought a lot
of them for a number of PC's we maintain, but never ever had a Seagate
fail!...
--
Tony Sayer

Pyriform wrote:
tony sayer wrote:
You wouldn't want a Maxtor, changed no end of those bl**dy things for
Seagate's which give no bother

Same company, of course... Not had any problem with any of my Maxtors. Was
it a specific model you had trouble with? What were the nature of the
failures?

The large capacity maxtors are incredibly unreliable, I have encountered a
large number of failures, i have one in my machine at the moment holding
some video, and other none essential stuff, it runs extremely hot, virtually
burning to the touch, and i honestly expect it to fail.

Gaz

tony sayer wrote:
Pyriform wrote:
tony sayer wrote:
You wouldn't want a Maxtor, changed no end of those bl**dy things
for Seagate's which give no bother

Same company, of course... Not had any problem with any of my
Maxtors. Was it a specific model you had trouble with? What were the
nature of the failures?

The 40 and 80 GB drives mainly bad sectors and complete disk failure.
Perhaps they had a bad batch, perhaps I was unlucky having bought a
lot of them for a number of PC's we maintain, but never ever had a
Seagate fail!...

That's the trouble with hard drives. Most of us base our opinions on our own
limited experience, and a few bad ones can colour our views for ever...
Seagate acquired Maxtor a year or so ago, and before that Maxtor acquired
Quantum. So the whole hard drive industry is rather inbred, and I have my
doubts that there are significant differences in reliability between brands,
except where there is a major design flaw in a particular model, as happens
from time to time.

Personally, I've yet to have a Maxtor fail, whereas the last hard drive I
replaced because it was faulty was a Seagate, oddly enough! Of course, the
fact that I've just rebuilt a PC for someone using a Maxtor drive makes me
want them to be reliable! The curious thing is, I initially installed a
Samsung drive, only to have it die completely during the install (click,
click, click). I got an identical replacement and tested it using Samsung's
software, and that yielded countless DRQ timeouts on two different
motherboards using two different SATA cables. I returned it and swapped it
for a Maxtor, which passed all the tests without error!

There is a postscript to this sorry tale. I got a phone call to say that the
PC wouldn't boot ("Insert proper boot media"). I decided to bring it home to
look at it more closely. Of course, it booted perfectly. I used the PC at
various times over the next few days, stress testing it thoroughly each
time, and eventually the problem recurred. I determined that the cause was
the SATA cable. Thermal stress and vibrations from the hard drive were
causing it to slowly back out of the socket. This never manifested as data
loss in a running system (though it might have done so eventually), but
always as failure of the BIOS to detect the drive when the PC was rebooted
after cooling down. Replacing it with a latching SATA connector seems to
have solved the problem.

I'm now wondering if the dodgy SATA cable somehow killed the Samsung drives,
though this does seem implausible... But two faulty drives in succession
seems equally implausible!

Pyriform wrote (apparently) in uk.tech.digital-tv on Thu 11 Jan
2007 23:53:32:

tony sayer wrote:
Pyriform wrote:
tony sayer wrote:
You wouldn't want a Maxtor, changed no end of those bl**dy
things for Seagate's which give no bother

Same company, of course... Not had any problem with any of my
Maxtors. Was it a specific model you had trouble with? What
were the nature of the failures?

The 40 and 80 GB drives mainly bad sectors and complete disk
failure. Perhaps they had a bad batch, perhaps I was unlucky
having bought a lot of them for a number of PC's we maintain,
but never ever had a Seagate fail!...

That's the trouble with hard drives. Most of us base our opinions
on our own limited experience, and a few bad ones can colour our
views for ever... Seagate acquired Maxtor a year or so ago, and
before that Maxtor acquired Quantum. So the whole hard drive
industry is rather inbred, and I have my doubts that there are
significant differences in reliability between brands, except
where there is a major design flaw in a particular model, as
happens from time to time.

Personally, I've yet to have a Maxtor fail, whereas the last hard
drive I replaced because it was faulty was a Seagate, oddly
enough! Of course, the fact that I've just rebuilt a PC for
someone using a Maxtor drive makes me want them to be reliable!
The curious thing is, I initially installed a Samsung drive, only
to have it die completely during the install (click, click,
click). I got an identical replacement and tested it using
Samsung's software, and that yielded countless DRQ timeouts on
two different motherboards using two different SATA cables. I
returned it and swapped it for a Maxtor, which passed all the
tests without error!

There is a postscript to this sorry tale. I got a phone call to
say that the PC wouldn't boot ("Insert proper boot media"). I
decided to bring it home to look at it more closely. Of course,
it booted perfectly. I used the PC at various times over the next
few days, stress testing it thoroughly each time, and eventually
the problem recurred. I determined that the cause was the SATA
cable. Thermal stress and vibrations from the hard drive were
causing it to slowly back out of the socket. This never
manifested as data loss in a running system (though it might have
done so eventually), but always as failure of the BIOS to detect
the drive when the PC was rebooted after cooling down. Replacing
it with a latching SATA connector seems to have solved the
problem.

I'm now wondering if the dodgy SATA cable somehow killed the
Samsung drives, though this does seem implausible... But two
faulty drives in succession seems equally implausible!

Have had three failed Maxtor drives replaced under warranty in the
last four years, out of five purchased. Also had a poor record with
Fujitsu drives before that. Have decided for blood pressure reasons
to just try a different manufacturer each time I buy a new one, at
least with no brand allegiance it'll be more random if one fails.

Saying that, I've never lost all the data with (P)ATA drives, having
a spare power supply to power the drive separately to the rest of
the PC has always given me the chance to copy all the data off
before returning the faulty drive.
--
MrGuest
Always, seemingly, on the road to nowhere