Maybe everyone bought from them after watching your video and dissecting their Sky box .. Lol .. I’m gonna be the next one!😂😂😂😂😂 Nice Video! Very useful!
Glad I came across this,for a few years now I’ve had the same box with cables,router etc in my divan drawer under my bed and remote also! I knew not just to toss it out as I had heard a few pals had done,but they will be kicking themselves now! A seagate HD is it then,I knew it was 500gb as was my original PS4 HD until I put in a 4Tb HD into it! I’ll get that HD out soon!👍🏼
I nearly switched this off and slated you in the comments at the very start but it turned out to be a very good video! Man... Who said men can't multi-task? One handed with precision my friend and I learn't something I didn't know.... Thank you
Useful video thanks I need a hd box now that bbc etc have gone to hd. If I buy a 2nd hand HD Sky box will it work? Do they work without a viewing card?
My Sky HD has a 1TB disk, remember fitting it was a herculean challenge. Have been with BTTV for 18months now and not looking back, can't be arsed to take the disk back out of the Sky box though at least until just before it goes to land fill !
If you have a second generation sky plus (not had and not the sky plus 360) released about 2001/2 it has a 40 Gb ide hard drive in it. It is still worn doing it. It’s capacity isn’t great but when I did it I had a 4.3 Gb hdd in my pc I had double spaced it (Vaguely memory-anyone else remember that post comment) I bought a new hdd about 72Gb and fitted into my sky box and put the 40 Gb into my pc. It was so much simpler in the old box remove top the hdd was mourned using fibber bushes to minimise vibration noise and hated thermal pads to reduce heat. It had an old style power cable and a very short ride cable.
yep good suggestion, it could also be something along the lines of handsome man (if slightly overweight) takes a sky box apart with a screwdriver and scissors.
Most PVRs have disks that have a modified firmware to make them spin slower and thus quieter and cooler. The better types of NAS storage recommend the Western digital red or seagate IronWolf which broadly speaking have the same needs. So the speed trade off is not a problem as long as speed isn't an issue! That means streaming music and video is fine, data backups should be ok too. If you are contemplating using the disk as your primary storage or for gaming. Think again. A new NAS ready 1Tb WD red will cost £50 or $50 while a 1tb SATA III disk suitable as a system primary £/$35. A 250Gb SSD £/$ 50-60. To my mind it means both your sky HDD and the caddy have to be virtually free to justify bothering. If you have to buy a disk caddy - you need to look long and hard at some pricelists. Taking an unknown disk on that has 5-7 years runningtime hanging over it. I wouldn't trust one with data that had any real value. Yes its a good feeling getting something for nothing ... but unless you already have all the bits under the bed - the returns diminish rapidly. Putting a sata I disk into a system capable of taking SATA II or III is an immediate pinchpoint - when you consider it's already a "calmed" slowed version it's almost a roadblock. If someone says here's a box of disks - and you have a box of bits festering in the attic - that's a different story. If you want to "play" with RAID or setup a linux box, either install virtual box or look at a live CD/DVD running puppy linux or Mint - either will be faster.
good idea, but HDD in set-top boxes are low power/performance models (same as CCTV), better getting proper external drive or equiv -- old sky drives have a tendency to fail after a few years continuous service. if i was to use them, it wouldnt be holding any data a couldnt afford to lose.
the hard drives used in external hard drives are generally low power/lower performance models too so as far as performance goes there shouldn't be too much difference between them. As with any drive its always good advice to have a backup, if you wouldn't store it on a 3/4/5 year old hard drive then don't store it on a 3/4/5 year old sky hard drive
I'm keeping my old SkyHD I want to turn it into a Linux server someday as soon as I can see more info on the Linux project people are working on with if
Thanks! the video made it look easier than it actually was lol! didn't have my usual trusty camera man, the box was ready to go in the bin and I decided to raid it for its HDD first and thought why not video it!
No. The stored data can only be read by the same model of Sky box that it was originally stored on, it cannot be read by a Windows or Linux device such as a desktop or laptop computer. Anyway, a Sky hard drive is too big to fit in a laptop.
I've got a humax dtr-t1000 recorder box but it just says please wait on the display I don't want to buy a new hard drive if its a software problem but I've got an old sky box so could I swap the hard drive out of that one as I don't use the sky box anymore
Honestly I had two of these things lying around, one of them I smashed in a new video, one of them is still lying around, I’m just not sure what I’m gonna do with it, however, I did remove the drive before I smashed it : ). It was only as we upgraded to the Sky Q.
The date code 12107 which is 2011-09-11 You should do a smart test because the drive is 6 years old .check for any bad sectors the drive could be on the way out.
Trevor Dunne Even though SMART is useful, it doesn't always tell you everything. In any case, I wouldn't trust a used drive like this one to keep anything that doesn't have a backup, or that I wouldn't mind losing.
Just be careful removing the SATA/power from the back of the hdd, the inside of those things is damn sharp. Still sporting a scar on my finger after catching it on the case when removing the power cable. Edit: And why did this come up in my feed less than a week after taking one out to stick in the pc? GOOGLE...!
The stored programs on a hard drive removed from an old Sky + box can only be recognised by a Sky + box. They are in a different format to that used by a Sky Q box. A DVD with Sky + recordings on it can't be read by any other device so would be a waste of your time and a DVD.
I was praying for that screwdriver to NOT slip. I kept saying out loud get some pliers or a multi tool please :) So glad no injuries were sustained. Next time please use pliers and think safety.
I took the hard drive out put it in a usb external case now it’s running all ps1games on raspberry 500gb seagate the other one is running Ubuntu wicked
Fantastic! Great to see someone getting use out of something that people up and down the country are throwing in the bin! I've popped mine in my server to record the video from my CCTV cameras.
Not a surprise - the only drives I've had full on weapon grade mechanical failure on (read/write head became a plough) have been Seagate ones. To be fair, that was an ancient IDE drive. The other that's just gone AWOB (Absent Without Backup) was also a Seagate - but a much younger SATA type. Drives in media storage/playback machines get a HELL of a lot of physical use though... and they are, after all mechanical in nature. So expected TBH.
Sadly, despite this video being VERY clear about getting the HD out and confirming what the HD is and it's performance... Didn't tell me one really important thing - if you could pull any data off it. And if so - were things stored in a useable format (mp4, AVI of some such) or was it just some weird preparatory format that only the software sat in the Sky box could decode. That is only questions I would like to know - because I've got a wad of HDDs kicking about, so don't need ANOTHER TB or so... But would like to keep my downloads.
Great video help.. just do the actions of the dismantle process at normal speed and show more close ups please? Thanks now I know how to reuse mine? And nice to see they use Seagate drives too! I always prefer them in computer use. :)
thanks for the feedback, ill try and get a 1x speed version uploaded when I'm on the computer :-) agree with the Seagate comment, never had one let me down in the last 20 years!
I wonder if the same can be done with the Tivo box from Virgin. As they are giving their new boxes and routers away for free I wonder if the same can be done to the old Tivo?
Can I actually download all the recorded programmes in the removed HD? After quitting from Sky, does the box still contain anything in the HD to download? TQ
I thought you were building up towards how to hack the sky box for watching subscription channels I have heard of this done on the older boxes, but not sure about the HD sky boxes.
I have the sky q box but now after a year I've decided to terminate and have gone to voda for internet. Sky want their equipment back sadly or they will charge me £100! Can I connect the old sky box that u have here to get the free channels? If so how?
Some of the older boxes had WD Green drives. The later ones had the Seagate Pipeline HDs, usually ST3500312CS is the model number. They make good data/secondary drives in PC's, but be aware that they are not designed for speed so not particularly fast.
yeah not a great performing drive but definitely fast enough for running in an enclosure etc. I will try and get my hands on one with a WD green to see which is the better performing drive! Thanks
I’m Going to ask as nobody else seems to have... the hard drive is an AV drive? If so it doesn’t have error checking... fine for recording video but deadly if recording data, ???
It is a hard drive. Its a standard 3.5'' hard drive. You can format it with NTFS and it will be a working hard drive. Do be aware that if the Sky Box is old the drive may have bad sectors. One of my drives had over 68,000 hours on it!
mike flynn There is no practical difference, but please don't quote me on that. The bigger problem is that it's a used drive that had a long runtime - not something that's desired for keeping data safely, unless you have a backup (and you really, really should have a backup, for many more reasons than just this). That would be a problem for any type of drive.
Swift Fox I think there is a practical difference.. it doesn’t have error checking so it’s ok for video but no good for data, it won’t check the data written is correct if it’s an AV drive, that’s important !
mike flynn In either case, you should be more worried about the age of the drive than the lack of error checking. If you want to put anything in these drives, make sure you have a copy somewhere else so that you don't lose it.
ok...so if you dont know the importance of error checking then this thread is done, the age of the drive is irrelevant, having data you can depend on is kinda important.
I find tons of these boxes in my area just being thrown out, not many people realise the drives can be recycled in these. I kinda laughed at how carefully you got the drive out, I just rip the box into shreds with brute force and a hammer lmao
Turtleneck Jesus Apparently the original XBox would lock the HDD, but unlock it when it powers up. The workaround is to let the XBox/Sky Box power up, then disconnect the SATA data cable _only_ (keep the power cable plugged in) while the box is still running, then connect data cable to your PC. The drive should remain unlocked at least until you reboot, which means you can try removing the password then.
Hi, please could you advise on an update to the link above for an appropriate mount/enclosure for the hard drive as that one is out of stock? if you have several of these hard drives is it possible to have one mount that you use for all of them or is the enclosure permanently attached to the hard drive once put on it? Thanks
Jason Thorner it was just a cheap one from eBay, it does SATA one one side and IDE the other, I'm actually not sure if both can be used at the same time I will check next time it's out!
just add it into an external enclosure and connect it via USB to your PC/Laptop and it will show up in your My Computer so you can just drag and drop photos onto the drive :-)
Don’t the tack back the sky boxes sky. like virgin media as the boxes remain the property of virgin media And not the customer as when you leave them you have to arrange to have the virgin box collected As you don’t own the box.
yup!! or sky and virgin will normally charge you £100 odd quid on your last bill for not returning their equipment, even though the box isnt worth the money they try charging you fort it .
Should be titled "How to make a really unreliable external HD". Sky Plus drives take a real hammering. You might only notice the occasional glitch on recordings, but would you true them to store valuable data?
I put a seagate from a otherwise dead sky hd+ box in an old pc and installed windows ... no issues that was 10 years ago ... hd+ boxes came out in 2006 so a few will have fucked up by now
@@scotttait2197 I used my first Sky+ box for years. Drive packed up, replacement from Sky looked like it was from an old box (PATA drives were obsolete). It packed up after a year.
Static used to be something that was talked about a lot when working on electronics, I remember when I first got into PC building people using earth straps to ground themselves etc. in reality these days its nothing to worry about.
Static is still very much a problem. If you're working on your own kit - you do what you want ... no argument. If you are doing for someone else ... and are expecting to be paid for it - you should be taking the correct precautions in all aspects of your work area. If you don't, you can't call yourself a professional. Basically you are just trying to avoid a direct low resistance path to earth. That's how the sparks (and damage) are created. You want a high resistance (1M ohm) leakage path to earth so the static charge can't arc away - it's not difficult. The correct equipment costs a couple of pounds - so if it's a hobby or a job you shouldn't be playing with customer's kit without it - it's not worth the risk. Solder stations and most other test equipment is esd safe anyway a mat costs peanuts in comparison.
I've yet to have a problem in 25 years of building/working on 30-50 machines a week, you are constantly grounding yourself when touching metal parts of the chassis
If you understand ESD you'll appreciate then that it's the constant grounding that potentially causes the problem, it certainly doesn't mitigate it. The bonded matting is designed to provide a "slow" leakage route not a "fast" discharge path to ground to prevent track scarring caused by arcing. The latest generation of sub 10nm is more prone despite being CMOS based. I've never killed a component outright either - the most common problem is reducing the lifespan. For the £20 it cost to bond my workshop - it's not worth skimping on. Like pat testing, calibrating testers etc - it's just another part of my quality promise that earns me repeat business and not return repairs.
Sorry guys, that was meant as a rhetorical question otherwise I'd have included a "?" mark. Perhaps I should have resorted to normal web speak and included a few profanities, a couple of insults and projected my dummy (I'm English) from my cot at the same time.
@@HardwareHackers No, everythngs blocked, they do it all remotely from their end. I assume it's somethinng in the viewing card that sends a massage to something on the box.
5900 RPM drive, and it would probably score considerably more sequential throughput over an eSATA - drive sells for £10 at CEX - or £8 if classified as "generic" 500GB. I have used some weird lashups, with cables that allow me to do internal to external or external to internal ... NB. Do not hotplug on a lashup, it may not be detected and may be harmful. I also found that if my system with a Jmicron ESATA was allowed to default, it considered it to be an IDE controller and did not support hotplug - the JMB36X driver had to be used to enable hotplugging.
I've got a 2TB hard drive in my box, my question is this, will it fit inside the external enclosure you've linked on EBay or will I need to get a different one? Thank you.
Link in the description has been updated as the previous seller ran out of stock!
Maybe everyone bought from them after watching your video and dissecting their Sky box .. Lol .. I’m gonna be the next one!😂😂😂😂😂 Nice Video! Very useful!
Glad I came across this,for a few years now I’ve had the same box with cables,router etc in my divan drawer under my bed and remote also! I knew not just to toss it out as I had heard a few pals had done,but they will be kicking themselves now! A seagate HD is it then,I knew it was 500gb as was my original PS4 HD until I put in a 4Tb HD into it! I’ll get that HD out soon!👍🏼
Perfect. With a no nonsense video and written instructions rather than spoken, you can't get it wrong.
I nearly switched this off and slated you in the comments at the very start but it turned out to be a very good video! Man... Who said men can't multi-task? One handed with precision my friend and I learn't something I didn't know.... Thank you
Useful video thanks
I need a hd box now that bbc etc have gone to hd.
If I buy a 2nd hand HD Sky box will it work?
Do they work without a viewing card?
Ha ha, watching this makes me feels like i'm watching a magician perform in a local social club in the late 80's. (Phoenix Nights)
Still got mine and it works just fine !
My Sky HD has a 1TB disk, remember fitting it was a herculean challenge. Have been with BTTV for 18months now and not looking back, can't be arsed to take the disk back out of the Sky box though at least until just before it goes to land fill !
Definitely worth robbing it before it goes!
If you have a second generation sky plus (not had and not the sky plus 360) released about 2001/2 it has a 40 Gb ide hard drive in it. It is still worn doing it. It’s capacity isn’t great but when I did it I had a 4.3 Gb hdd in my pc I had double spaced it (Vaguely memory-anyone else remember that post comment) I bought a new hdd about 72Gb and fitted into my sky box and put the 40 Gb into my pc. It was so much simpler in the old box remove top the hdd was mourned using fibber bushes to minimise vibration noise and hated thermal pads to reduce heat. It had an old style power cable and a very short ride cable.
40GB IDE drives are perfect for older PC's too just a good size! top tip, thanks
I still have mine and it still works perfectly
Love it man! We've got 3 old boxes, so that 3 new harddrives. Thank loads 👍
your welcome!, merry Christmas!!
So really this should be titled what to do with HD in sky box
yep good suggestion, it could also be something along the lines of handsome man (if slightly overweight) takes a sky box apart with a screwdriver and scissors.
Good video, been doing this for years with my old sky boxes.
Most PVRs have disks that have a modified firmware to make them spin slower and thus quieter and cooler. The better types of NAS storage recommend the Western digital red or seagate IronWolf which broadly speaking have the same needs.
So the speed trade off is not a problem as long as speed isn't an issue! That means streaming music and video is fine, data backups should be ok too. If you are contemplating using the disk as your primary storage or for gaming. Think again.
A new NAS ready 1Tb WD red will cost £50 or $50 while a 1tb SATA III disk suitable as a system primary £/$35. A 250Gb SSD £/$ 50-60.
To my mind it means both your sky HDD and the caddy have to be virtually free to justify bothering. If you have to buy a disk caddy - you need to look long and hard at some pricelists. Taking an unknown disk on that has 5-7 years runningtime hanging over it. I wouldn't trust one with data that had any real value. Yes its a good feeling getting something for nothing ... but unless you already have all the bits under the bed - the returns diminish rapidly. Putting a sata I disk into a system capable of taking SATA II or III is an immediate pinchpoint - when you consider it's already a "calmed" slowed version it's almost a roadblock. If someone says here's a box of disks - and you have a box of bits festering in the attic - that's a different story.
If you want to "play" with RAID or setup a linux box, either install virtual box or look at a live CD/DVD running puppy linux or Mint - either will be faster.
N
good idea, but HDD in set-top boxes are low power/performance models (same as CCTV), better getting proper external drive or equiv -- old sky drives have a tendency to fail after a few years continuous service. if i was to use them, it wouldnt be holding any data a couldnt afford to lose.
the hard drives used in external hard drives are generally low power/lower performance models too so as far as performance goes there shouldn't be too much difference between them.
As with any drive its always good advice to have a backup, if you wouldn't store it on a 3/4/5 year old hard drive then don't store it on a 3/4/5 year old sky hard drive
Still use it
Just got new one. As with Queen box you cannot transfer recordings even with a hdmi to scart lead
Save time by ignoring the fan, no need to unscrew it. Also, since the hard drive is so quiet, you could use it for a cheap PC build.
did the same when Virgin said they didnt want their box back, seagate HDD, but the Sata and power were combined. and the whole cable was 110mm
I'm keeping my old SkyHD I want to turn it into a Linux server someday as soon as I can see more info on the Linux project people are working on with if
I fucking hate computers but this I can use. Genius
I found 4 cable boxes in the trash and Salvaged the hdds from them and got over 6tb from them one was a 3tb drive and the others were 1tb
Nice and detailed guys - perfect
Thanks!
Fair play for doing that with 1 hand I would have ended up throwing it at a wall
Thanks! the video made it look easier than it actually was lol! didn't have my usual trusty camera man, the box was ready to go in the bin and I decided to raid it for its HDD first and thought why not video it!
If you do that you will damage the hard drive..lol
Will be doing this but I don't want to format it as I want to keep most stuff that is on it. The question is will it play on the laptop 🤔
No. The stored data can only be read by the same model of Sky box that it was originally stored on, it cannot be read by a Windows or Linux device such as a desktop or laptop computer. Anyway, a Sky hard drive is too big to fit in a laptop.
2TB ripped out of my sky+ box when I upgraded to Sky Q, Now in my P.C. as a back up drive :-)
I've got a humax dtr-t1000 recorder box but it just says please wait on the display I don't want to buy a new hard drive if its a software problem but I've got an old sky box so could I swap the hard drive out of that one as I don't use the sky box anymore
Honestly I had two of these things lying around, one of them I smashed in a new video, one of them is still lying around, I’m just not sure what I’m gonna do with it, however, I did remove the drive before I smashed it : ). It was only as we upgraded to the Sky Q.
Cheers for this .. a great Find/UA-cam-Recommend.. Just upgraded to SkyQ so got 2 Sky+ Boxes doing nothing now! :)
thanks! get the tools out!!!
The date code 12107 which is 2011-09-11 You should do a smart test because the drive is 6 years old .check for any bad sectors the drive could be on the way out.
Trevor Dunne Even though SMART is useful, it doesn't always tell you everything. In any case, I wouldn't trust a used drive like this one to keep anything that doesn't have a backup, or that I wouldn't mind losing.
I work on a carboot doing multiple task, lost count of the sky boxes left behind for the skip, not no more.
great source of cheap boxes!
or free!
Aye. I will keep an eye out for these, should they ever come up somewhere for free or near-free.
Im always picking up old sky boxes that people leave behind at the bootsale i got about 70 stacked up at the moment all free
I didnt relise these things had HDD in them, thought they were memory slots or something.
Absolutely brilliant. Thanks very much
Just be careful removing the SATA/power from the back of the hdd, the inside of those things is damn sharp. Still sporting a scar on my finger after catching it on the case when removing the power cable.
Edit: And why did this come up in my feed less than a week after taking one out to stick in the pc? GOOGLE...!
Radix Lecti good old Google listening to everything you do!!!
I may do this. Just shows what you can do with one hand. 👍
I would put a good use to one of these.
get yourself down the local car boot sale and see what you can score!
I've done this a few times got a sky plus hd 3d box the one before q has a 2tb hd looks like I'll roll back a few years and do it again ha
Hi how do I save programs on there onto a dvd as m getting rid of the old box?
The stored programs on a hard drive removed from an old Sky + box can only be recognised by a Sky + box. They are in a different format to that used by a Sky Q box. A DVD with Sky + recordings on it can't be read by any other device so would be a waste of your time and a DVD.
@@eddienewall7265 there should be a way to carry these fwd there must be a demand for it
The Sky TV Engineer usually takes the old Box with him..they don't usually leave it behind🤔🤔
Good video take my hat off to you doing it 1 handed
Thanks! my assistant had a day off that day lol was harder than I thought it would have been!
I was praying for that screwdriver to NOT slip. I kept saying out loud get some pliers or a multi tool please :) So glad no injuries were sustained. Next time please use pliers and think safety.
Brilliant !
I started watching this in 2018
I took the hard drive out put it in a usb external case now it’s running all ps1games on raspberry 500gb seagate the other one is running Ubuntu wicked
Fantastic! Great to see someone getting use out of something that people up and down the country are throwing in the bin!
I've popped mine in my server to record the video from my CCTV cameras.
Do you need a ps1 emulator or does raspberry just plays ps1 games on the go?
Are you guys speakin english?
can we see any old recorded programmes on our PC or laptop? or will it need scrambling software
Thanks for the advise and explanation
Smart test reveals most of these drives are bad from sky boxes
Not a surprise - the only drives I've had full on weapon grade mechanical failure on (read/write head became a plough) have been Seagate ones. To be fair, that was an ancient IDE drive.
The other that's just gone AWOB (Absent Without Backup) was also a Seagate - but a much younger SATA type.
Drives in media storage/playback machines get a HELL of a lot of physical use though... and they are, after all mechanical in nature.
So expected TBH.
@@parasiteunit a few I pulled out the sky boxes also refused to format but seemed fine , assume they are locked in some way?
Hi, Nice video mate. Will the sky box work without the hard drive present? Thanks
Definitely not!
Cool i have a bag of them 500gb and Terabites
Would the the BT box be the same
Sadly, despite this video being VERY clear about getting the HD out and confirming what the HD is and it's performance...
Didn't tell me one really important thing - if you could pull any data off it.
And if so - were things stored in a useable format (mp4, AVI of some such) or was it just some weird preparatory format that only the software sat in the Sky box could decode.
That is only questions I would like to know - because I've got a wad of HDDs kicking about, so don't need ANOTHER TB or so...
But would like to keep my downloads.
You can clone the hard drive, but I do not know if it would be compatible with the SkyQ devices
Nope different format... can colne if the removed drive was starting ti fail
Wow,a lot to do just to get the hard drive out,I have 2 of these boxes,so be taking the hard drives out of them then.. :) then they can go in the bin.
Yeah deep down in the depths! The bin is the best place for them once the HDD is removed lol
I like the hammer option
It's understandable it being faster given it's got to handle a lot of AV data at speed.
Great video help.. just do the actions of the dismantle process at normal speed and show more close ups please? Thanks now I know how to reuse mine? And nice to see they use Seagate drives too! I always prefer them in computer use. :)
thanks for the feedback, ill try and get a 1x speed version uploaded when I'm on the computer :-)
agree with the Seagate comment, never had one let me down in the last 20 years!
You can see the video at a quarter speed using the UA-cam menu. 😀
Thanks for that!
Your welcome 😁
I wonder if the same can be done with the Tivo box from Virgin. As they are giving their new boxes and routers away for free I wonder if the same can be done to the old Tivo?
yes it can, let me see if I can get my hands on an old Tivo box to do a video, the engineer took mine away when I upgraded to Tivo V6!
It’s low quality budget hard drive from seagate eg now Samsung electronics. You can buy them for tenner new from Korea etc
depends what you consider "low quality" - Something that happily runs for 10+ years in a small, hot enclosure isn't "low quality" in my opinion
your hard drive you hve tbye special adpator to work perfect running up date technology
Very informative video . Thank you
Thanks for the feedback, glad you enjoyed it :-)
Can I actually download all the recorded programmes in the removed HD? After quitting from Sky, does the box still contain anything in the HD to download? TQ
I thought you were building up towards how to hack the sky box for watching subscription channels I have heard of this done on the older boxes, but not sure about the HD sky boxes.
All that just for a Hard Drive, I would have also hacked it to build a stand alone UHF modulator
Great video. . . sorry to see you've only got one arm. . . . ;-)
a head cam I think would be a nice investment I think!!! cheers for the feedback :-)
I have the sky q box but now after a year I've decided to terminate and have gone to voda for internet. Sky want their equipment back sadly or they will charge me £100! Can I connect the old sky box that u have here to get the free channels? If so how?
Did you use windows 10?..... as I have 3 HD's and neither work with windows 10
Hi, yes we used windows 10, they should work with any modern OS from Windows XP onwords
Is it possible to use the hard drive for ur cctv dvr recording box or would u need special adaptor etc.thanks
yeah assuming your DVR uses a 3.5" SATA hard drive which every one ive come across in the last 5-6 years has :-)
Some of the older boxes had WD Green drives. The later ones had the Seagate Pipeline HDs, usually ST3500312CS is the model number. They make good data/secondary drives in PC's, but be aware that they are not designed for speed so not particularly fast.
yeah not a great performing drive but definitely fast enough for running in an enclosure etc. I will try and get my hands on one with a WD green to see which is the better performing drive! Thanks
Hardware Hackers Definitely the Seagate drive without a doubt. I have a WD3200AVVS drive from an older box and it is definitely slower!
Is it possible to read stuff written on hd by box on a computer?
www.skycopyplus.co.uk/extract.php this should be of use :-)
Thanks
I’m
Going to ask as nobody else seems to have... the hard drive is an AV drive? If so it doesn’t have error checking... fine for recording video but deadly if recording data, ???
It is a hard drive. Its a standard 3.5'' hard drive. You can format it with NTFS and it will be a working hard drive. Do be aware that if the Sky Box is old the drive may have bad sectors. One of my drives had over 68,000 hours on it!
mike flynn There is no practical difference, but please don't quote me on that. The bigger problem is that it's a used drive that had a long runtime - not something that's desired for keeping data safely, unless you have a backup (and you really, really should have a backup, for many more reasons than just this). That would be a problem for any type of drive.
Swift Fox I think there is a practical difference.. it doesn’t have error checking so it’s ok for video but no good for data, it won’t check the data written is correct if it’s an AV drive, that’s important !
mike flynn In either case, you should be more worried about the age of the drive than the lack of error checking. If you want to put anything in these drives, make sure you have a copy somewhere else so that you don't lose it.
ok...so if you dont know the importance of error checking then this thread is done, the age of the drive is irrelevant, having data you can depend on is kinda important.
I tried this before and could not get windows to recognize the HDD
I find tons of these boxes in my area just being thrown out, not many people realise the drives can be recycled in these. I kinda laughed at how carefully you got the drive out, I just rip the box into shreds with brute force and a hammer lmao
Well shit my mum's vag must be pretty strong if it can take a hammer
I remember trying this but the hdd was locked and couldn't format it in windows without the unlock key from the sky box
Turtleneck Jesus Apparently the original XBox would lock the HDD, but unlock it when it powers up. The workaround is to let the XBox/Sky Box power up, then disconnect the SATA data cable _only_ (keep the power cable plugged in) while the box is still running, then connect data cable to your PC. The drive should remain unlocked at least until you reboot, which means you can try removing the password then.
Of course make sure that the unlock is permanent before you put any of your data on the drive, that is.
Turtleneck Jesus Ask on here if you want more details. I'm not guaranteeing this will work, I'm just saying it _might_.
Hi, please could you advise on an update to the link above for an appropriate mount/enclosure for the hard drive as that one is out of stock? if you have several of these hard drives is it possible to have one mount that you use for all of them or is the enclosure permanently attached to the hard drive once put on it?
Thanks
It is update today.
I recently bought a 500Gb Seagate from Maplins.... £50!
Ouch!!! you will know next time :-)
ive been in daily looking for a clearance sale but no luck yet!
THE BINS THE BEST FOR THIS BOX 🤷
what is the name of the hard drive dock you udrd in the video as I have multiple hard drives
Jason Thorner it was just a cheap one from eBay, it does SATA one one side and IDE the other, I'm actually not sure if both can be used at the same time I will check next time it's out!
Cannot play recording?
Hi I recently got a new Qbox I want to transfer some programs saved on the old box onto dvd,s , can you help?
No, that doesn't work because the stored data is in a different format.
I thought that the sky box remains the property of sky. So when you upgrade say to Sky Q they take it back
No, the Sky + box is your property, so you can do whatever you want with it. Sky don't want the old Sky + boxes back.
If I wanted to connect this hard drive to store photos how would I do it?
just add it into an external enclosure and connect it via USB to your PC/Laptop and it will show up in your My Computer so you can just drag and drop photos onto the drive :-)
Hardware Hackers thank you so much you earned yourself a new sub 👍
Thanks! Appreciate it
Hardware Hackers no problem keep up the good work
Don't trust 5 disk though. Have a backup of your photos elsewhere.
Don’t the tack back the sky boxes sky. like virgin media as the boxes remain the property of virgin media
And not the customer as when you leave them you have to arrange to have the virgin box collected
As you don’t own the box.
yup!! or sky and virgin will normally charge you £100 odd quid on your last bill for not returning their equipment, even though the box isnt worth the money they try charging you fort it .
Should be titled "How to make a really unreliable external HD". Sky Plus drives take a real hammering. You might only notice the occasional glitch on recordings, but would you true them to store valuable data?
I put a seagate from a otherwise dead sky hd+ box in an old pc and installed windows ... no issues that was 10 years ago ... hd+ boxes came out in 2006 so a few will have fucked up by now
@@scotttait2197 I used my first Sky+ box for years. Drive packed up, replacement from Sky looked like it was from an old box (PATA drives were obsolete). It packed up after a year.
Just wondering whether working on a Nylon carpet is mandatory or whether you really don't need to worry about the static.
Static used to be something that was talked about a lot when working on electronics, I remember when I first got into PC building people using earth straps to ground themselves etc. in reality these days its nothing to worry about.
Static is still very much a problem. If you're working on your own kit - you do what you want ... no argument. If you are doing for someone else ... and are expecting to be paid for it - you should be taking the correct precautions in all aspects of your work area. If you don't, you can't call yourself a professional.
Basically you are just trying to avoid a direct low resistance path to earth. That's how the sparks (and damage) are created. You want a high resistance (1M ohm) leakage path to earth so the static charge can't arc away - it's not difficult.
The correct equipment costs a couple of pounds - so if it's a hobby or a job you shouldn't be playing with customer's kit without it - it's not worth the risk. Solder stations and most other test equipment is esd safe anyway a mat costs peanuts in comparison.
I've yet to have a problem in 25 years of building/working on 30-50 machines a week, you are constantly grounding yourself when touching metal parts of the chassis
If you understand ESD you'll appreciate then that it's the constant grounding that potentially causes the problem, it certainly doesn't mitigate it. The bonded matting is designed to provide a "slow" leakage route not a "fast" discharge path to ground to prevent track scarring caused by arcing. The latest generation of sub 10nm is more prone despite being CMOS based.
I've never killed a component outright either - the most common problem is reducing the lifespan. For the £20 it cost to bond my workshop - it's not worth skimping on. Like pat testing, calibrating testers etc - it's just another part of my quality promise that earns me repeat business and not return repairs.
Sorry guys, that was meant as a rhetorical question otherwise I'd have included a "?" mark. Perhaps I should have resorted to normal web speak and included a few profanities, a couple of insults and projected my dummy (I'm English) from my cot at the same time.
My internet is crap because of this Internet for the past 7 or 8 years
wonder how sky block you from recording on it as a freesat if it's literally an hdd.
it must be a software block in the software. Does it let you view your old recordings once you cancel your subscription?
@@HardwareHackers No, everythngs blocked, they do it all remotely from their end. I assume it's somethinng in the viewing card that sends a massage to something on the box.
Скажи пожалуйста название шрифта который использовался в видео
I've got a box of these from sky boxes people were throwing out.
Great video 👍🏻
Use pliers for the tabs armature
Get a dremel or tin snips and cut a hole where the hardrive is otherwise its a bastard to open
No its not its a piece of piss
@@scotttait2197 the old sky box had lots of twisted metal pices that had to be untwished is that the one you are talking about or the newest sky box
5900 RPM drive, and it would probably score considerably more sequential throughput over an eSATA - drive sells for £10 at CEX - or £8 if classified as "generic" 500GB.
I have used some weird lashups, with cables that allow me to do internal to external or external to internal ... NB. Do not hotplug on a lashup, it may not be detected and may be harmful. I also found that if my system with a Jmicron ESATA was allowed to default, it considered it to be an IDE controller and did not support hotplug - the JMB36X driver had to be used to enable hotplugging.
could i use it for internal hdd on pc as mine is on its way out
Shaun Yates yep you sure can it's based on a standard pc hard drive so 3.5" and sata interface with standard Sara power connector so a straight swap!
Great video but not the music!!
thanks for the feedback we will try something different next time!
Hardware Hackers if I wanted to store photos on the hard drive how would I do it?
Hardware Hackers I like the music.
Me too
I subbed loved the effort
thanks :-)
I've got a 2TB hard drive in my box, my question is this, will it fit inside the external enclosure you've linked on EBay or will I need to get a different one? Thank you.
simple i put mine in the bin
I am watching one right now they work fine use it and this too #rte 2
Wow amazing
Thanks! Glad you enjoyed it :-)
I presume this voids your warranty!
What's the music right at the very beginning for just a few seconds the again at the end for a min or so??
It's a song we created ourselves that we call hackerjack
Sounds great. Do you have the full version please? Thanks
a few of our early videos we first done have it throughout the length of the videos :-)
You should put it on sound cloud it's really cool
Hello thank you
Thx
no problem :-)