SD PVR with Sata Hard Drive

[toendra]

as for the 90deg male to female ide pin converter. I went to a local electronics suppplier and bought the parts there. (I have two brothers who are both in the electronics / mechanical engineering fields) So the one boet told me the stuff I needed (cant remember the names of them - the pins that is).

Because you dont get a 90 male to female pin, we had to solder two male ends together as in my pic..

Hi IRG,

This is probably a very ignorant observation, but wouldnt an IDE cable do the job aswell as the 90 deg bend?

I want to upgrade my SD PVR with a bigger HDD, but there is no way that I would be able to make a bend like yours.

I would rather go with an 1tb SATA drive than a 500gb IDE/PATA drive. You all know why.....

Is there any specific IDE to SATA converters that I should avoid? Or rather which ones are better.

Is this how I would set up the conversion?:
Plug the PATA to SATA converter into the IDE cable thats on the board
Connect the 1tb SATA HDD to the PATA to SATA converter via a SATA data cable
Now for the power cables:
Put a two way split cable onto the IDE power cable thats coming from the board. Something like this
One point goes to the PATA to SATA converter, and
The other goes to the SATA HDD via a IDE to Serial Power Adapter Cable

Is this correct
Thanx for your help

 

[SirFooK'nG]

Hi IRG,

This is probably a very ignorant observation, but wouldnt an IDE cable do the job aswell as the 90 deg bend? U can use an IDE cable just fine, but u still need male pins on the end of the IDE for the converter

I want to upgrade my SD PVR with a bigger HDD, but there is no way that I would be able to make a bend like yours.

I would rather go with an 1tb SATA drive than a 500gb IDE/PATA drive. You all know why..... Try a 1tb, might work...

Is there any specific IDE to SATA converters that I should avoid? Or rather which ones are better. Not sure, got the first one I found

Is this how I would set up the conversion?:
Plug the PATA to SATA converter into the IDE cable thats on the board Yes, but remember that you will need male to male pins on the end of the IDE cable
Connect the 1tb SATA HDD to the PATA to SATA converter via a SATA data cable Correct
Now for the power cables:
Put a two way split cable onto the IDE power cable thats coming from the board. Something like this
One point goes to the PATA to SATA converter, and Not needed
The other goes to the SATA HDD via a IDE to Serial Power Adapter Cable

just splice the power supply cable for the converter onto the 5v cables (this is if you intend keeping everything internal)
Is this correct
Thanx for your help

Check my edits...

 

[toendra]

Thanx IRG

 

[SirFooK'nG]

Follow up for all those interested.... My Mod still going strong, have had no problems at all for almost a year now!

 

[toendra]

Hi IRG,
Thanx for all the help - finally ran out of space on my SD PVR and bought a 1tb sata drive to replace the original IDE PVR HDD.
Just wanted to share this with you.

This is what you get after you clone your old hdd onto the new one - I used Norton Ghost
This took close to 3 hours
It`s strange that the capacity increased after the cloning.........

Not satisfied with the small increase I fiddled with the drive`s partitions using Paragon Partition Manager™ 11 Free Edition.

Partition 1 - 1.8gb
Partition 2 - 167gb
Partition 3 - 737gb

End results:
459 total hours available to record on.
I`m happy with that and will not fiddle further with the partitions

Cost:
R680 for a 1tb Seagate HDD
R90 for a IDE to Sata converter
R0 for a old style power cable "spliter" (had a spare in my "box") - Something like R15?
R0 for a old style power cable to Sata power converter (had a spare in my "box") - Something like R15?
= R770 for an additional 379 hours

 

[SirFooK'nG]

nice!!! 1TB works then!!! sweet...

 

[Bezzie]

Looking to upgrade my SD PVR hard drive. Can someone please repost the How to manual again as the link to the file is broken.

I'm a complete novice with electronics so am a bit scared to do the IDE - SATA conversion but it looks like it's becoming unavoidable. IDE drives are becoming as scarce as hens teeth and if you can get one it's more expensive than a SATA drive.

 

[daserraf]

I have just installed a 1.5 TB SATA drive and have over 800 hours to record now (i was just curious to see how big i can make it)

 

[Bezzie]

daserraf; Did you install external or internal? I'm trying to figure out how to do it internal.

 

[shearder]

Hey Guys

I have tried to download the pfd manual but it seems it is not available on any link i have tried. Does someone have an ftp or fileshare they could put it up with? Thanks in advance.

When i do download it is only a few KBs and doesn't open

 

[Bundu]

has anybody doen this upgrade recently? does it still work?

 

[Rustler]

has anybody doen this upgrade recently? does it still work?

I completed an upgrade about a month ago, and it's been running without too many issues since

My upgrade was prompted by my original harddrive starting to give me issues. I went the external SATA harddrive route with a drive I had lying around at home. Next will be to upgrade to a bigger drive

 

[Bundu]

I completed an upgrade about a month ago, and it's been running without too many issues since

My upgrade was prompted by my original harddrive starting to give me issues. I went the external SATA harddrive route with a drive I had lying around at home. Next will be to upgrade to a bigger drive

sounds promising! What do you mean when you say "...without too many issues.."? What size SATA drive did you use? What SATA to IDE converter card did you use?

thanks!

 

[shearder]

I have ALL the good intentions of doing this because i also STILL need to fix the fan in the SDPVR which is whining a little BUT the lack of time has stunted any progress thus far!! HD's are cheap as chips now but STILL time is NOT on my side!!

 

[lexor]

I have ALL the good intentions of doing this because i also STILL need to fix the fan in the SDPVR which is whining a little BUT the lack of time has stunted any progress thus far!! HD's are cheap as chips now but STILL time is NOT on my side!!

Make time please - and keep us posted.

 

[bekdik]

I had tried various drives IDE & SARTA which produced encouraging results at first, only to die within a day or two.

A lot cheaper and a solution producing a fully working solution is to take the barfed pvr in to Multichoice and spend around R340 to get a new/refurbished unit.

 

[Bundu]

I had tried various drives IDE & SARTA which produced encouraging results at first, only to die within a day or two.

A lot cheaper and a solution producing a fully working solution is to take the barfed pvr in to Multichoice and spend around R340 to get a new/refurbished unit.

I think the main aim here is actually to have a PVR with a bigger capacity

 

[Rustler]

sounds promising! What do you mean when you say "...without too many issues.."? What size SATA drive did you use? What SATA to IDE converter card did you use?

thanks!

I also made up a 90 deg IDE header out of separate components - so that the IDE to SATA converter would sit flat in the box. Then bout a week into it, I lost connectivity to the HDD. I then discovered when doing a continuity test on each of the pins that my soldering skills aren't as good as they used to be and one of the pins had come loose. A quick fix and all has been fine since.

I even make use of the disk preservation utility on the PVR without any issues. At the mo I've got a 320GB disk connected, but plan to upgrade at some stage.

As far as which IDE to SATA converter, I'll have a look at home if I still have the packaging, otherwise I'll need to open up the box and have a look. It was just one I picked up at the local computer shop in Stellies for 60 or 70 bucks.

 

[Bundu]

I also made up a 90 deg IDE header out of separate components - so that the IDE to SATA converter would sit flat in the box. Then bout a week into it, I lost connectivity to the HDD. I then discovered when doing a continuity test on each of the pins that my soldering skills aren't as good as they used to be and one of the pins had come loose. A quick fix and all has been fine since.

I even make use of the disk preservation utility on the PVR without any issues. At the mo I've got a 320GB disk connected, but plan to upgrade at some stage.

As far as which IDE to SATA converter, I'll have a look at home if I still have the packaging, otherwise I'll need to open up the box and have a look. It was just one I picked up at the local computer shop in Stellies for 60 or 70 bucks.

Very nice!! I assume you also fat32 formatted and partitioned the SATA into 3 partitions - do you recall what the sizes of the partitions were?

 

[Rustler]

Very nice!! I assume you also fat32 formatted and partitioned the SATA into 3 partitions - do you recall what the sizes of the partitions were?

Yea, you have to format to FAT32. 1st partition was 1GB (think this is system space), 2nd 100GB (on demand stuff?), then the remainder +-219GB (actual recording space)