Sky+ Hard Disk Replacement
A couple of weeks ago our V3 Thomson Sky+ box started to misbehave. Blue screen on power up, 10 minute hang followed by a reboot on anything to do with the sky plus planner or program playback. This sounded like a failing disk and a bit of research with google suggested the same, but that a planner rebuild or a full reset might fix it.
First off, we tried the planner rebuild as this doesn't delete recorded content:
- Enter service menu (Services, 4, 0, 1, Select) - this will appear to do nothing until you've pressed select.
- Select 'Sky+ Planner Rebuild'
The box will chunter away for a minute or two then reboot.
This didn't make any difference, so next up was a full reset:
- Unplug the sky plus box
- Press and hold the 'left' and 'right' arrow buttons on the Sky+ box - NOT the remote.
- Keep them pressed, and plug in the power cable.
- Keep them pressed until the playback circle lights up.
- Release the left and right buttons, and press the 'Select' button (between left and right)
At this point the playback circle should start to rotate backwards for a few minutes, then the box will restart.
I also did a firmware reset just to make sure:
- Unplug the sky plus box
- Press and hold the 'back up' button on the Sky+ box - NOT the remote
- Plug the power cable back in, keeping the button pressed.
- After a few seconds, a message should appear on the TV saying that the box is being updated. Release the 'back up' button and wait for the 10-15 minutes this takes...
After this the sky+ box will restart.
This made things significantly better for us for a few days. Unfortunately one recorded program started to refuse to play back, and would consistently make the sky+ box hang while making a 'clicking' noise as the disk tried to re-read the bad sectors.
At this point, rather than risk calling sky and getting a replacement Sky+ box (and a £65 callout charge, and the danger of getting one of the crappy Amstrad boxes) I ordered a new 160 GB drive, the same size as the original - a Seagate 7200.10 (ST3160815A). I picked this model because it's well known for being fairly quiet and has a 5 year warranty. The old problems with 7200 RPM drives taking too long to spin up seem to have been solved in the recent Sky+ Firmware.
Our box is well out of warranty, so it's probably only worth trying this if yours is, or you're happy to invalidate it...
Fitting it was a bit of a bugger, but the procedure goes something like this. Again, this is for a V3 Thomson box - it will be different for other types.
- Undo the 3 screws at the back of the case.
- Pry the bottom edges slightly apart at the back and lift. There'll be 3 'notches' along the bottom which will make the lid stick - just lift the bottom edge of the lid over them as you go. Eventually you'll be able to unhook it from under the front edge and the lid will come off.
- Unplug the power and IDE cables from the drive and the small fan power cable.
- Unscrew the 2 small screws near the side of the box that are clearly visible.
- There are 4 other screws holding the plastic drive mount in place - 2 toward the back of the box, 1 at the side, and one right at the front that's quite hard to spot. If you can't get your screwdriver in, you can unscrew the front panel screws on the far left and right of the box at the front and lean the front panel forward slightly.
- At this point the disk mount should come loose, and with a little wiggling should come clear.
- Undo the 4 screws underneath that hold the disk in place. One will be hidden under a 'warranty void if removed' sticker.
- Remove the disk and make a note of the jumper position. Ours was set to Cable Select (CS), so I left the new drive on this
- Put the drive in place, then fit everything back together in reverse order.
Once the drive has been replaced the Sky+ box will initially seem to not work. Going through the 'full reset' procedure above to format the drive solved this, and it all seems to be working.