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Archive for December 2007
How to replace the disk in your sky+ box
this little enterprise began when the box started playing up. We got some intermittent issues like the recordings would stop part way through, the play back would get choppy or the box would just turn itself off. A few calls to different people on the sky helpline revealed a secret menu – oooo. To get there you press the sky services button on the remote (near the top), choose 4 for system set up, then press 0, 1, “Select” on the remote. This opens up a few interesting things. So if you’re having trouble you can do a sky+ planner rebuild.
sky+planner rebuild
this seems to reorganise things on the sky+ disk. it generally reboots the box and usually keeps all your recordings (it lost all mine once). This generally fixed our issues for a wee while when we did this.
system reset
this option seems to clean the system and delete your recordings but it is very effective at getting you back to a sensible state – i.e. one where recordings work again (woo).
replace the disk
we took this route after a chat with the support guy who said the disks tend to fail after a while and we’ve had our box for some time. He offered to replace the box for £100 + engineer fee – £150 or so to get me back to the level of service I was paying for now??? madness I tell you. Well I had heard of people upgrading the boxes to increase disk space so I thought lets repair it myself and get an improved system to boot.
this thread on sky+ upgrades offers a good overview of the work required. I identified that I had a pace v2 box from the description. this list of working hard drives directed me to by this hard drive on ebay . I went to maplins and got a security bit toolset (needed to open the box) and followed the instructions here for the V2
About 40 minutes later we’ve got 6 times the space and a working box. I didn’t do any copying of data (we watched most stuff before we switched). So far – all’s well and all for £60.
upgrading disk in sky+ box was surprisingly easy
have a look at my links on the subject here
went smooth as a breeze and seems to have fixed the annoying intermittent errors we were seeing with recordings. I like it long time.
Li'l Phoebe passes away
One of the four mice has passed away. She was the wee runt so not too unexpected. Her three sisters are fine and playful still tho
