8300HD hard drive replace

[weegeordie]

My 8300HD died and I think its the hard drive. I took it out and checked it on a Windows system...no joy. I have heard that if you replace it the system will reformat the new drive itself.  I took a similar drive from a Windows desktop and installed it. Do I have to format the drive or ???  It's currently running through series of numbers, and has been for the last hour or so. Thanks in advance if anyone can help.   ...george

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[weegeordie · Accepted solution]

The tech rep sent a signal and I was online in seconds. After a 25 minutes wait on hold. Everything looks good now. 

The source of my problems after installing the replacement disk appears to have been because the box was not connected in the network. I was working on it in my shop. Lesson learned.

Thanks for your efforts...george

[57]

Here's a thread on replacing the iHDD on the SA8300HD.

https://www.digitalhome.ca/threads/sa8000-8300hd-internal-hard-disk-upgrade-works-cloning-too-see-po...

Note that you need to use an IDE drive, which are very hard to find these days...

As discussed in a similar recent thread, it may be an easier, better option to purchase a 9865 PVR used on Kijiji or similar.  These can be found for $40 - $50. See the guidelines in the following post on purchasing used:

https://www.digitalhome.ca/threads/guidelines-for-selling-and-buying-a-used-rogers-terminal-in-ontar...

[Bplayer]

It's been a while since I did this, but just putting in a new drive is all that should be required. The drive should be a high performance one capable of sustained read/writes. A regular HDD may not last long with this load and heat.

[weegeordie]

The replacement drive I have is an IDE. Barracuda 7200. I'm thinking I might need to format it first.

[weegeordie]

Does anyone know if NTFS is an acceptable format for the 8300?

[Bplayer]

The firmware does its own drive formatting. Pre formatting should not be required.

[weegeordie]

There is still something wrong here. The unit just keeps cycling though a series of letters and digits. Does it regardless of whether the drive is installed or not.

[57]

Do you have another box that you can put at that location to test to see if it boots and if the signal is OK there? See the following post regarding signal.  You can check the signal yourself using the link in the following post, or you can call Rogers and they can check the signal remotely, if they can "see" the box at all.  I'm not sure if you can check signal if the box doesn't boot all the way.

https://communityforums.rogers.com/t5/TV/Nextbox-3-0-PVR-Skips-Recorded-Playback-Only/m-p/387839#M42...

The PVR doesn't actually "format" the drive, which often takes a few minutes on a computer. It simply "recognizes" the drive and overwrites anything on it once it records. The "recognition" only usually takes a few seconds.  This is a very old PVR - probably 15+ years - perhaps something else has failed like a poor connection inside, cracked board, etc.

[weegeordie]

I've hooked the box back into the network and after a few error codes it's sitting at 4 dashes which I believe is brick mode. I'm waiting for tech support to see if they can activate the box I will post back here when I'm finished with them.  Thanks   ...george

[57]

Yeah, 4 dashes ("----") indicates the box is either bad, or not properly activated.  I had this happen to me when I left a box unplugged for 3 weeks while on vacation. I had to take the issue to "second level" with the Rogers CSRs for them to properly activate my box (which took a couple of days). At first they said my box was bad, but since it coincided perfectly with my vacation, I doubted a box issue and I was right.  I don't unplug my boxes any more when on vacation...